LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

^im- Coitijrigf;t "f D. 

i UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE PRESENT 



RELIGIOUS CRISIS 



AUGUSTUS BLAUVELT 




NEW YORK ^^^^^^g^^^ 
P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 ANP 29 WEST 23D STREET 

1882 






COPYRIGHI, BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 
1882. 



fO 

^ PREFACE. 
O 
e^ 



^ 



After having perused this voUime, the reader will per- 
^ ceive that it is not designed to be complete in itself. On 
S^ the other hand, it is put forth merely as the first of a series 
of volumes, the second of which will be entitled "The Reli- 
gion of Jesus," and the third " Supernatural Religion." 

Whether the author will or will not be able to develop 
the entire scheme of religious thought, which he has pro- 
jected in his own mind, within the compass of these three 
volumes, without prolonging them to an undesirable length, 
remains to be determined. If he can, he will. Otherwise 
it will be abundant time to announce the specific titles of 
the remaining works after it becomes manifest that they 
must be written. 

Like every other literary project or production, this one 
in particular has had its own inner and individual history. 
When the author says that he was graduated from Rutgers 
College, at New Brunswick, N.J., and also from the Peter 
Hertzog Theological Seminary, connected with the same 
institution, he has given a sufficient guaranty that his origi- 
nal instruction in divinity was of the most hyper-orthodoK 
description. Nor does he concede that any alumnus of 
either Alma Mater ever went forth who was, to begin with^ 
a more devout and implicit 1 reliever than he was in both the 
essentials and the non-essentials of the general orthodox 
theology, and notably that of the Calvinistic order. 

It is needless to assure the reader, that, while he was a 
student at New Hrunswick, the anilior was most securely 



Z'. PREFACE.. 

guarded against all contamination from modern infidelity,' 
He does not remember, for example, that in those days he 
ever heard so much as the very mention of the name of 
Strauss. At the same time he does have an indistinct recol- 
lection, that, in a vague and general way, he was taught at 
once to dread and to abhor that modern theological mon- 
strosity, namely, German Rationalism. Just why he should 
either dread or- abhor- it, he did not learn ; but that it was a 
theological, monstrosity of some sort or another, to be both 
dreaded" and. abhorred, he took for granted on the ipse dixit 
of those- distinguished Doctors in Divinity whose special pre- 
rogative he then conceived it to be to form his opinions on; 
all such subjects. 

Thus matters continued even after the author's gradua-- 
tion, until some eighteen years ago. Then, for the first 
time, he chanced' one day to get a formal introduction to 
Dr. David Friedrich Strauss, as that arch-heretic is repre- 
sented in his first " Life of Jesus." 

From that time onward the author has devoted himself, 
with aa constantly io^easing, degree of exclusiveness, as a 
specialist^ toi irxKestigatoians, eonwected with the various de- 
partments, of moderni bifolifiar and. religious research. 

The specific purpose with which he originally took up 
tliese investigations was. to, vindicate the traditional Protes- 
tant conceptions about the Bible and religion against all 
the assaults of the modern unbelievers. But from the very 
outset he conceived the idea, that, to make this vindication 
of any actual and permanent service to those conceptions, 
it must itself be actual, it must itself be scientific, it must 
itself be something decidedly more than merely theological. 
In othen wojcds, wbiutevec }ub.fc:r,ited.. conceptions about eithei 



PREFACE. 3 

the Bible or religion he found he could not establish by 
valid evidence and by legitimate reasoning, he resolutely 
determined that he would never make the effort to establish 
either by any such distortion of evidence or by any such ille- 
gitimate reasoning as he had fortunately come to discover 
to be only too characteristic of the mediaeval apologists. 

The longer he has prosecuted his researches from this 
standpoint and in this spirit, the more he has become 
astounded at the aggregate results to which he found him- 
self arriving. Contrary to all his original anticipations, he 
has come more and more distinctly to perceive that the 
traditional Protestant conceptions about both the Bible and 
rehgion, instead of being scientifically defensible even down 
to details, require a revision and re-statement of the most 
revolutionary nature. 

Some suggestions towards such a revision and re-statement 
the reader will find attempted in this series of volumes ; the 
first of which is herewith submitted to the consideration of 
that portion of the public which feels an interest in current 
biblical and religious discussions. 

In the preface to his thoughtful and scholarly work on 
"The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth 
Gospel," Dr. William Sanday says : " In looking back over 
this first attempt in the difficult and responsible field of 
theology, I am forcibly reminded of its many faults and 
shortcomings. And yet it seems to be necessary that these 
subjects should be discussed, if only with some slight de- 
gree of adequacy. I cannot think it has not been without 
serious loss on both sides, that, in the great movement 
that has been going on upon the Continent for the last 
forty years, the scanty band of English theologians should 



4 PREFACE. 

have stood almost entirely aloof, or should only have 
touched the outskirts of the questions at issue, without 
attempting to grapple with them at their centre. It is not 
for me to presume to do this, but I wish to approach as 
near to it as I can and dare ; and it has seemed to me that 
by beginning upon the critical side, and taking a single 
question in hand at a time, I might be not altogether unable 
to contribute to that perhaps far-off result which will only be 
obtained by the co-operation of many men and many minds." 

In like manner the present writer feels that any sugges- 
tions which he can personally make towards that funda- 
mental revision of the traditional misconceptions about the 
Bible and religion which the present age and hour demand, 
must of necessity be more distinguished for their many 
faults and shortcomings than for any thing beside. But 
here in America the average theological considerations of 
these subjects have thus far been, in comparison with those 
of Germany, even more superficial, even more unintelligent, 
even more mediaeval, than have been those of England. 
And it is high time that we began here in America to grap- 
ple in earnest with these questions at their very centre ; 
seeking to come to a thorough-going understanding with 
them, in view of the most advanced developments of present 
biblical and religious enlightenment, and even speculation. 

If the author can only succeed in stimulating other 
and far more able minds, other and far more accomplished 
scholars, to contribute something towards a radical and sat- 
isfactory adjustment of these issues, he will after that be 
perfectly content to see his own crude conclusions discarded 
and forgotten. 

KlNGSTON-ON-THE-HUDSON, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. The Crisis 7 

II. Dogmatic Theology 12 

III. The Validity of the Biblical Canon . . 22 

IV. The Inspiration of the Bible ... 31 
V. The Historical Character of the Gospels . 56 

VI. The Religion of the Bible .... 79 

VII. Religion 102 

VIII. The Religion of Jesus in 

IX. Religious Repression 123 

X. Religious Liberty 136 

Index to Authors cited, Quotations, and Evi- 
dences 185 



THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CRISIS. 

Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, a leading evangelical 
divine of Germany, affirms that *' since the first 
days of the church, when she had to defend her 
faith against heathen calumny and heathen science, 
the attacks upon Christianity and the church have 
never been so manifold and so powerful as at the 
present time. The contest is no longer upon single 
questions, such as whether this or that conception 
of Christianity is the more correct, but the very 
existence of Christianity is at stake." ^ Indeed, says 
Professor Christlieb, likewise of Germany : " Whether 
you visit the lecture-rooms of professors, or the 
council-chambers of the municipality, or the work- 
shop of the artisan, everywhere — in all places of 
private or social gathering — you hear the same tale: 
the old faith is now obsolete." ^ 

Canon Liddon thus speaks for England : " The 
vast majority of our countrymen still shrink with 

7 



8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

sincere dread from any thing like an explicit rejec- 
tion of Christianity. Yet no one who hears what 
goes on in daily conversation, and who is moderately 
conversant with the tone of some of the leading 
organs of public opinion, can doubt the existence of 
a wide-spread unsettlement of religious belief. Peo- 
ple have a notion that the present is, in the hack- 
neyed phrase, *a transition period,' and that they 
ought to be keeping pace with the general move- 
ment." 3 

Professor Macpherson thus depicts the state of 
things in Scotland: *'A11 religious questions seem 
to be at present once more thrown into the crucible, 
to undergo a fiery trial. Not merely the truths of 
revealed religion, but those truths which constitute 
what is termed natural religion, are subjected to this 
trial." 4 ''It is also a characteristic of our times, 
that this contest respecting the foundation of reli- 
gious belief is not confined, as it used generally to 
be, within certain circles of speculative men. All 
classes in society are taking part in it. The press, 
now so powerful in its influence, has involved rich 
and poor, learned and unlearned, in this great con- 
flict." 5 

Pressense, speaking for France, declares that a 
formidable crisis has there commenced alike in the 
history of Catholicism and of Protestantism, and 
that nothing will check it. There is not a single 



THE CRISIS. 9 

religious party, he says, which does not feel the 
need either of confirmation or transformation. All 
the churches are passing through a time of crisis. 
Aspiration toward the church of the future is be- 
coming more general and more ardent." ^ 

In a private letter to the author. Professor J. F. 
Astie thus speaks for Switzerland : "In America, 
the theology of the past is still powerful. With us, 
orthodoxy has lost the control. At the utmost the 
old theology is here without hold, except upon such 
minds as are at once narrow and fanatical. May you 
never know in the United States the sad condition 
in which we are here ; for we are here suspended 
between a past which cannot be restored, and a 
future which cannot be born. May you not have, 
as we have had, a theological and ecclesiastical revo- 
lution, but rather a religious evolution which is at 
once calm and peaceful." 

But that we are, at least in some initial way, be- 
ginning to pass here in America, either through an 
agitated theological revolution, or through a com- 
paratively calm and peaceful religious evolution, is 
patent on the surface. Modern unbelief, in one 
form or another, constitutes to-day one of the up- 
permost topics of our nation and our times. Our 
pulpits, according to the modern or mediaeval attain- 
ments of their respective occupants, make it one of 
the most prominent subjects either of their discus- 



lO THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

sions, or their declamations, or their semi-impreca- 
tory supplications. It pervades all departments of 
our domestic literature, whether secular or religious. 
It is being discussed by us, now in our private con- 
versations, now in our social gatherings, now in our 
lyceums or club-rooms. Special professorships and 
lectureships are devoted to its demolition. Our 
popular platform orators find it to their pecuniary 
profit to promulge it. 

Nor is the radical religious revolution which is 
to-day sweeping, or beginning to sweep, over this, in 
common with all other Christian countries, either a 
mere matter of the moment, or due to any tempo- 
rary or evanescent causes. Adam Storey Farrar, in 
his Bampton Lectures for 1862, puts it down as the 
fourth great historical crisis of the Christian faith, 
and finds himself obliged to treat of it in connection 
with the development of modern thought in three 
nations for two centuries. These are, first, English 
Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; 
secondly, French Infidelity in the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; and, thirdly, German Rationalism in the eigh- 
teenth and nineteenth centuries. 7 

The present religious crisis, then, has already 
been in progress for more than two hundred years, 
and has gathered up into itself all the motion and 
momentum imparted to great religious epochs by 
international scholarship and thought. Nor can it 



THE CRISIS. II 

be doubtful that the underlying causes which have 
thus far imparted to it this persistent vitality will 
continue to increase in volume, and to push the 
crisis forward until every one of its profoundest 
problems, which is capable of a solution, has even- 
tually been settled, and settled to the satisfaction of 
every cultured mind. 

In Germany, where its development has been the 
most complete, its results have been the most disas- 
trous to all the traditional conceptions of Chris- 
tianity, whether Catholic or Protestant. And else- 
where throughout Christendom, in proportion as its 
influences extend, almost in that proportion do the 
like results obtain, or threaten to obtain. 

As for us who have become more or less inextrica- 
bly involved in this onward religious movement, it 
certainly cannot be premature for us, on the one 
hand, to make the effort to discover, in so far as may 
be possible, whither we are tending ; and, on the 
other hand, to provide ourselves, in so far as we may 
be able, with at least some provisional religious be- 
liefs and hopes, to take the place of those beliefs and 
hopes from which we have undoubtedly departed, and 
departed never to return. 



CHAPTER II. 

DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 

In his Cunningham Lectures for 1873, Dr. Rainy 
confesses that he finds himself confronted in Scot- 
land, not merely with heresy, but with heresy per- 
sistently professed, and such heresy as is subversive 
of what is fundamental in the current views of Chris- 
tianity.^ 

Some specimens of this heresy may be found by 
the reader in the volume entitled " Scotch Sermons," 
issued in 1880. Thus, one of the contributors, the 
Rev. W. L. M 'Parian, professes to speak for a class 
which includes in it many of the religious teach- 
ers in all the churches. This writer, among other 
things, proceeds to exhibit some of the sections of 
scholastic theology which these religious teachers 
regard as specially untenable. These sections, he 
affirms, comprehend the following dogmas : i. The 
descent of man from the Adam of the Book of Gene- 
sis ; 2. The fall of that Adam from a state of original 
righteousness by eating the forbidden fruit ; 3. The 
imputation of Adam's guilt to all his posterity ; 



DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 3 

4. The consequent death of all men in sin ; 5. The 
redemption in Christ of an election according to 
grace ; 6. The quickening in the elect of a new life ; 
7. The eternal punishment and perdition of those 
who remain unregenerate.^ 

This single example suffices to illustrate, that, 
within the bosom of all the Protestant denomina- 
tions, there exist to-day representative persons who 
have undero:one a more or less radical revolution of 
opinion concerning almost every dogmatic statement 
of doctrine which has come down to us from the 
dogma-making epochs. The creed cannot be named, 
which is so brief that some more or less considera- 
ble party in the Protestant churches does not to-day 
contend for its abridgment. The dogma cannot be 
instanced, which is so fundamental that some repre- 
sentative minority in the Protestant ranks does not 
to-day contend, either for its revision and restate- 
ment, or for its absolute abandonment. 

Let us who are on the extreme wing of this pro- 
gressive movement within the Protestant ranks de- 
clare our position, if possible, with even more dis- 
tinctness. Our rupture with Protestantism does not 
relate to those mere minor matters of belief which 
divide Protestants into all their wearisome array of 
theological sects and cliques. All these sects and 
cliques combined could not to-day put forth any 
mere abstract and consensus of their belief so short 



14 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

that we would not cut it shorter, or so fundamental 
that we would not either greatly modify it, or reject 
it altogether. 

To illustrate. We find in the Constitution of the 
Evangelical Alliance a brief summary of the con- 
sensus of the various evangelical or Protestant con- 
fessions of faith. The opening article — which we 
need alone to cite — is this : — 

"• I. The divine inspiration, authority, and suffi- 
ciency of the Holy Scriptures." 

Do we, the representative minority of religious 
revolutionists still classified with Protestants, and 
presumably in question, — do we accept of even this 
consensus } 

If we do not, we may no longer deserve the name 
of Protestants ; we may no longer deserve in any tra- 
ditional sense the broader name of Christians ; but 
do we accept of this consensus } 

Before we give any decided and decisive answer 
on this point, it will be well to come to such an un- 
derstanding with ourselves as to render it certain 
what sort of an answer we alone can give with 
entire mental rectitude, not to say with entire moral 
honesty. 

And, in the first place, let us direct our atten- 
tion to a portion of Article VI. of the Church of 
England. Here it is : *' Holy Scripture contains all 
things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is 



DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 5 

not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not 
to be required of any man that it should be believed 
as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or 
necessary to salvation. In the name of Holy Scrip- 
ture we do understand those canonical books of the 
Old and New Testament, of whose authority was 
never any doubt in the Church." 

With this, so far as our present purpose is con- 
cerned, all the Protestant churches will substantially 
agree. 

Over against this the Dogmatic Decrees of the 
late Vatican Council fulminate as follows: "All 
those things are to be believed with divine and 
Catholic faith, which are contained in the Word of 
God, written or handed down, and which the Church, 
either by a solemn judgment, or by her ordinary and 
universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having 
been divinely revealed." 3 ''And these books of the 
Old and New Testament are to be received as sacred 
and canonical in their integrity, with all their parts, 
as they are enumerated in the decree of the said 
Council." 4 

The semi-scholarly reader will perceive, therefore, 
that Protestants, first of all, affirm that the Scriptures 
alone can furnish the Christian church with a divinely 
authoritative subject-matter for her dogmas. Catho- 
lics, on the other hand, allege that the written books 
of the Bible, and the unwritten traditions of the 



1 6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Church, are equally of a divine authority in all 
matters of Christian belief, so long as those tra- 
ditions are only duly proposed and sanctioned by the 
ruling powers of Rome. But, if the unwritten tra- 
ditions of the Church be excluded from the problem, 
we begin at once to approximate to something like 
a consensus of opinion, even between the Catholics 
and Protestants. They both concur, that is to say, 
in the view that the Bible — the written Bible — is 
divinely authoritative in matters of religious belief, 
alike for Protestants and Catholics. 

And yet they, of course, have their well-known 
traditional dispute concerning what the written 
Bible is. What sacred books together constitute 
the written Bible 1 The Catholics say that this was 
all settled by the sacred Synod of Trent, and that 
the apocryphal books of the Old Testament must 
be admitted in the canon. The Protestants contend 
quite as stoutly that these apocryphal books must 
not be admitted in the canon. But, if this further 
bone of contention about the canonical character or 
uncanonical character of the apocryphal books of 
the Old Testament be cast aside, we find the high 
contesting parties standing again almost peaceably 
together. In other words, while the Catholics will 
not concede that the Protestant Bible contains, in 
the Old Testament division, all the canonical books 
of the Holy Scriptures, they will not merely concede, 



DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 7 

but insist, that all the books which the Protestant 
Bible does contain are undoubtedly canonical. 

Nor can any Protestant body, no matter how 
supremely anti-Catholic, desire a more emphatic 
statement of the divine and infallible inspiration 
of the Scriptures than is presented in the Vatican 
Decrees. For those decrees explicitly affirm that 
both the Old and New Testaments contain revela- 
tion with no admixture of error, for the reason that, 
having been written by the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost, they have God for their author. 5 

But not only do Protestants and Catholics to-day 
concur in the view, first, that all the special books 
which together constitute the Protestant Bible are 
sacred and canonical, and, secondly, that these spe- 
cial books, taken in their integrity and with all their 
parts, present the traditional theological dogmatists 
with a subject-matter for their dogmas which is at 
once divinely inspired and therefore absolutely devoid 
of every kind of error. Catholics and Protestants 
have from the very outset held this view in common. 
It is indeed true, that, on the former point, neither 
the Protestant divines nor the Catholic divines would 
to-day regard some of the leading reformers and bib- 
lical scholars of the sixteenth century as supremely 
orthodox. Thus Luther denied the canonicity of 
the Book of Esther. He repudiated the apostolical 
authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the 



1 8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

General Epistles of James and Jude, and also of the 
Apocalypse. The Apocalypse in particular Luther 
placed very much on a parity with the Fourth Book 
of Esdras, — which latter book he talked of throwing 
into the Elbe. And to him the Epistle of James 
was but an epistle of straw. 

Dr. Davidson, who is our authority for the above 
statements concerning Luther, likewise afifirms that 
Bodenstein of Carlstadt divided the biblical books 
into three classes, namely, those of the first, those of 
the second, and those of the third rank, in point 
of dignity and authority ; that Zwingli pronounced 
the Apocalypse to be uncanonical ; and that CEco- 
lampadius would not permit either the Apocalypse, 
or James, or Jude, or Second Peter, or Second and 
Third John, to be compared with the other portions 
of the Scriptures.6 

But all this is scarcely more than an individual 
development — an almost accidental feature — con- 
nected with the Reformation. The questioning of 
the canonicity of the books to-day composing the 
Protestant Bible did not then become general-, and 
did not, even so far as it progressed, meet with any 
thing like an ultimate and general Protestant accept- 
ance. For whether we consult the Helvetic Confes- 
sion, the Gallic Confession, the Belgic Confession, 
the Westminster Confession, the Confession revised 
and accepted by the Synod of Dordrecht, or consult 



DOCfMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 9 

the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, 
what do we discover ? We discover simply that the 
Reformation of the sixteenth century decided, in 
its aggregate and final outcome, as that outcome 
found expression in the sub-Reformation theology, 
that the Protestant churches would reject the apoc- 
ryphal books contained in the Catholic canon of the 
Old Testament Scriptures, but would retain all the 
other books of the old Catholic Bible, as being truly 
sacred and canonical, and making up together their 
own Holy Scriptures. 

As for the second point, we only need to cite by 
way of proof the following remark by Adam Storey 
Farrar : " The belief in a full inspiration was held 
from the earliest times, with the few exceptions 
observable in occasional remarks of Origen, Jerome, 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius Zigabenus 
in the twelfth centruy." 7 

Looked at, therefore, only with reference to the 
leading issues and controlling outcome, it was with 
regard, neither to the canonicity of the various books 
at present composing the Protestant Bible, nor to 
the divine and infallible inspiration of those books, 
that the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth cen- 
tury came to an open rupture with the Church of 
Rome. On both of these points they found them- 
selves practically accordant with the views already 
existing in the Church of Rome. All they did was 



20 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

simply to accept and adopt both these points almost 
precisely as they found them in the Church of Rome, 
as being common postulates alike of Catholic and 
Protestant theology. And that they did this without 
any due examination of either the one postulate or 
the other, all modern biblicists are perfectly aware. 

But since the sixteenth century, and especially 
during the present century, both these jDOStulates 
have been examined into with some degree of thor- 
oughness, and still an increasingly profound and 
searching and scholarly examination of them con- 
tinues to progress. As Strauss has it : ** The old 
Reformation had an advantage in this, that what 
then appeared intolerable appertained wholly to the 
doctrines and practices of the Church, while the 
Bible, and an ecclesiastical discipline simplified ac- 
cording to its dictates, provided what seemed a 
satisfactory substitute. The operation of sifting and 
separation was easy ; and, the Bible continuing an 
unquestioned treasure of revelation and salvation to 
the people, the crisis, though violent, was not dan- 
gerous. Now, on the contrary, that which then 
remained the stay of Protestants, the Bible itself, 
with its history and teaching, is called in question : 
the sifting process has now to be applied to its own 
pages. ^ 

What has been the result of this modern sifting of 
the traditional Catholic and Protestant views about 



DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 21 

the Scriptures ? Can we, who are more or less thor- 
oughly conversant with the sifting process, any longer 
believe, for one thing, that all the books and portions 
of books which together constitute the Protestant 
Bible are canonical ? Can we any more believe all 
those books and portions of books are divinely in- 
spired, and therefore utterly devoid of every sort of 
error ? 

If we should accordingly ask ourselves afresh 
whether we can accept any mere abstract, no matter 
how brief, any mere consensus, no matter how unani- 
mous and fundamental, of the various evangelical 
or Protestant confessions of faith, what must we 
answer ? The indications are already becoming some- 
what pronounced that we will be obliged to answer, 
that, with us, all further questions about the various 
Protestant confessions of faith are obsolete ; and 
that it is extremely doubtful whether we can even 
accept any mere abstract and consensus of those 
fundamental, traditional views about the Bible which 
Protestants and Catholics alike agree upon, and which 
are placed at the very basis of all Catholic and all 
Protestant dogmatic formulations of what they are 
pleased to call sometimes Christianity, and sometimes 
the true religion of the Bible. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 

We have already adverted to the traditional dis- 
pute between Protestants and Catholics as it con- 
cerns the canonical or uncanonical character of the 
apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Leaving 
these parties to share their individual opinions on 
that subject, we will now proceed to examine very 
briefly into the validity of some of the leading rea- 
sons which the Protestants in particular have been 
in the habit of advancing in support of the canon- 
icity of the several books composing the Protestant 
collection of the Holy Scriptures. 

The chief argument which the older Protestant 
divines present for the canonicity of the Old Testa- 
ment books, which they accept in common with the 
Catholics, consists in the allegation that all these 
books, and none others, received the explicit sanc- 
tion of Jesus and his apostles. But among modern 
Protestant biblicists this line of argument must have 
a very modified value. Thus Professor W. Robert- 
son Smith afifirms that neither the Book of Esther, 



THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 23 

nor that of Canticles, nor that of Ecclesiastes, is 
ever referred to in the New Testament.^ Moreover, 
Dr. Davidson frankly concedes that the New Testa- 
ment writings betray a familiarity with the ideas and 
expressions of the apocryphal books, as James with 
those of Sirach, Hebrews with those of Second Mac- 
cabees, Romans with those of Wisdom, and Jude 
with those of Enoch. ^ 

Regarded from this point of view, therefore, mod- 
ern Protestant biblical scholars would be compelled 
to admit that at least three of the non-apocryphal 
books — Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes — must 
be excluded from the Old Testament canon, and that 
at least four of the apocryphal books — Sirach, Sec- 
ond Maccabees, Wisdom, and Enoch — must be in- 
cluded in such canon. 

Again : The exact principle which guided the origi- 
nal collectors in the formation of the biblical canon 
is confessedly obscure. Still no one can question 
that authorship, or supposed authorship, had very 
much to do in deciding whether a particular book 
was to be accepted or rejected at the hands of such 
collectors. It is well known, for example, that, in 
the early ages of the Christian church, the New 
Testament writings were divided into two distinct 
classes. The first class was characterized as the 
Homologoumena, and the second class as the Atiti- 
legoniena. The Homologoumena consisted of such 



24 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

books as were universally recognized ; the Antilego- 
mena consisted of such books as were acknowledged 
in some parts of the church, but disputed in others. 
And, according to Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
the books in the first class were those of admitted 
and undoubted apostolical authority.3 

But as early as the fifteenth century we find Eras- 
mus denying the apostolical origin of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, of Second Peter, and of the Apoca- 
lypse, but leaving the canonicity of these books un- 
questioned. 4 And in the sixteenth century Calvin 
draws a corresponding distinction between the can- 
onicity and the apostolical origin of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews and of Second Peter. 5 And now, in 
the nineteenth century, something like a consensus 
of opinion is beginning to obtain among the modern, 
as distinguished from the traditional, Protestant bib- 
lical authorities, that, as Dr. Davidson observes, the 
canonicity of the books is a distinct question from 
their authenticity.^ Thus the general rule is laid 
down by the late Dean Stanley, that the authority 
or canonicity of a sacred book hardly ever depends 
on its particular date or name. For, says he, if for 
these purposes it was necessary that the writers 
should be known, nearly half the books of the Old 
Testament would at once be excluded from the can- 
on. 7 Nor need it scarcely be remarked, that, if 
authenticity should be made the standard of their 



THE VALID I TY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 25 

canonicity, not a few of the New Testament books 
would share a corresponding fortune. For it is not 
merely true that in these days a very large percent- 
age of the Old Testament writings are decided to 
belong neither to the authors nor the ages to which 
they are traditionally accredited : it is equally true 
that Professor W. Robertson Smith merely expresses 
a prevailing modern scholarly conclusion when he 
affirms that a considerable portion of the New Tes- 
tament is made up of writings not directly apostoli- 
cal.^ 

In a subsequent chapter we will discover, in the 
New Testament department of modern biblical criti- 
cism, what slender claims the Gospels in particular 
possess to having been written by the original 
apostles or disciples of Jesus, whose respective 
names they bear. Just here it will suffice, for the 
benefit of such readers as are not familiar with these 
subjects, to instance a few of the considerations in 
view of which so much of the Old Testament litera- 
ture is to-day decided to be of a more or less un- 
authentic character. 

One of the clearest and most exhaustive exposi- 
tions of this topic at large, existing in the English 
language, is that developed by Professor W. Robert- 
son Smith, in his '' Lectures on the Old Testament 
in the Jewish Church." 

Speaking with special reference to the Pentateuch, 



26 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Professor Smith, among other things, observes : ** The 
idea that Moses is author of the whole Pentateuch, 
except the last chapter of Deuteronomy, is derived 
from the old Jewish theory, in Josephus, that every 
leader of Israel wrote down, by divine authority, the 
events of his own time, so that the sacred history is 
like a day-book, constantly written up to date. No 
part of the Bible corresponds to this description, and 
the Pentateuch as little as any. For example, the 
last chapter of Deuteronomy, which, on the common 
theory, is a note added by Joshua to the work in 
which Moses had carried down the history till just 
before his death, cannot really have been written till 
after Joshua was dead and gone. For it speaks of 
the city of Dan. Now, Dan is the new name of 
Laish, which that town received after the conquest 
of the Danites in the age of the Judges, when 
Moses' grandson became priest of their idolatrous 
sanctuary. But, if the last chapter of Deuteronomy 
is not contemporary history, what is the proof that 
the rest of the book is so .? As a matter of fact, 
the Pentateuchal history was written [not in the wil- 
derness, but] in the land of Canaan. ... In Hebrew 
the common phrase for westward is ' seaward,' and for 
southward, 'towards the Negeb.' The word Negeb, 
which primarily means parched land, is, in Hebrew, 
the proper name of the dry steppe district in the 
south of Judah. These expressions for west and 



THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 2/ 

south could only be formed within Palestine. Yet 
they are used in the Pentateuch, not only in the nar- 
rative, but in the Levitical description of the taber- 
nacle in the wilderness (Exod. xxvii.). But at Mount 
Sinai the sea did not lie to the west, and the Negeb 
was to the north. Moses could no more call the 
south side the Negeb side of the tabernacle than a 
Glasgow man could say that the sun set over Edin- 
burgh. The answer attempted to this is, that the 
Hebrews might have adopted these phrases in patri- 
archal times, and never given them up in the ensuing 
four hundred and thirty years ; but that is nonsense. 
When a man says towards the sea, he means it. . . . 
Again; the Pentateuch displays an exact topographical 
knowledge of Palestine, but by no means so exact a 
knowledge of the wilderness of the wandering. The 
narrator knew the names of the places famous in the 
forty years' wandering ; but for Canaan he knew local 
details, and describes them with exactitude as they 
were in his own time (e.g., Gen. xii. 8, xxxiii. i8, 
XXXV. 19, 20). Accordingly, the patriarchal sites 
can still be set down on the map with definiteness ; 
but geographers are unable to assign with certainty 
the site of Mount Sinai, because the narrative has 
none of that topographical color which the story of 
an eye-witness is sure to possess. Once more: the 
Pentateuch cites as authorities poetical records which 
are not earlier than the time of Moses. One of 



28 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

these records is a book, — the Book of the Wars of 
Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14). Did Moses, writing con- 
temporary history, find and cite a book already cur- 
rent, containing poetry on the wars of Jehovah and 
his people, which began in his own times ? Another 
poetical authority cited is a poem circulating among 
the MosJielim, or reciters of sarcastic verses (Num. 
xxi. 2J^ seq.). It refers to the victory over Sihon, 
which took place at the very end of the forty years' 
wandering. If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, what 
occasion could he have to authenticate his narrative 
by reference to these traditional depositaries of 
ancient poetry } " 9 

Such, then, are a few of the considerations assigned 
by Professor W. Robertson Smith, in proof of the 
position, that, as a whole, the Pentateuch never could 
have been written by Moses in the wilderness, but 
must have been written by some subsequent author, 
or rather by some subsequent series of authors, in 
the land of Palestine. And as of the Pentateuch, 
so of most of the other books, alike of the Old and 
New Testament. The more rigidly the subject of 
their authenticity is inquired into, the more doubtful 
does their authenticity become. 

It should be carefully noted, however, that it has 
all along been quite aside from the present writer's 
purpose to enter at length upon the full and formal 
discussion of the general subject of the authenticity 



THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 29 

or unauthenticity of the various biblical books. His 
design has been merely to permit Professor Smith, in 
the most summary manner possible, to place the ordi- 
nary reader, by an illustrative argument or two, on an 
understanding relation with modern biblical scholars 
on this question. The question itself has already 
been canvassed backward and forward, and over and 
over again. As the result of this discussion, biblical 
scholars have already become permanently divided 
into two well-defined classes, — the new and the old. 
Broadly speaking, the old continue to adhere to 
the opinion that the various biblical books belong 
to the authors and the ages to which they are tradi- 
tionally referred. The new have reached the final 
conclusion that, exceptional instances aside, such is 
not the case. 

Modern biblical scholars accordingly find them- 
selves confronted with the following dilemma. Either 
they must admit that most of the books of both the 
Old and New Testament are not canonical ; or else 
they must insist, after the manner of Dr. Davidson, 
Dean Stanley, and Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
that the authenticity of these books is no proper, or 
at least no necessary, criterion of their canonicity. 

But, if authenticity be no necessary criterion of 
their canonicity, what criterion is to be adopted } 
Why, says Dr. Davidson : " Canonical authority lies 
in the Scripture itself ; it is inherent in the books, 



30 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

SO far as they contain a revelation, or declaration of 
the divine will. Hence there is truth in the state- 
ment of the old theologians, that the authority of 
Scripture is from God alone." ^° Or, as the same 
thing is substantially expressed in the Vatican De- 
crees : " These books of the Old and New Testament 
the Church holds to be sacred and canonical, not 
because, having been carefully composed by mere 
human industry, they were afterwards approved by 
her authority, nor merely because they contain rev- 
elation with no admixture of error, but because, 
having been written by the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been 
delivered as such to the Church herself." " 

The general subject of the inspiration of the Bible 
is so large a one, however, that we shall be obliged 
to devote a special chapter even to the preliminary 
aspects of its consideration. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 

The extremest view of biblical inspiration is that 
promulgated in the extract from the Vatican Decrees 
which is cited at the conclusion of the foregoing 
chapter. 

This view represents the entire biblical I'iterature, 
from Genesis to Revelation, as having been so writ- 
ten by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost that it 
contains not merely a revelation, but a revelation 
without the least degree of error. And not only is 
this the view of the subject which is officially pro- 
claimed to-day by the Church of Rome : it is like- 
wise the view of the subject contended for, even in 
this nineteenth century, by the super-orthodox among 
the Protestant divines. 

The question is thus raised, whether, as a matter 
of fact, the Bible does contain no elements of error. 

In the New Testament department Strauss in par- 
ticular has exhibited in great detail, and with a 
microscopic minuteness, the discrepancies and con- 
tradictions alleged to exist in our present Gospels. 

3» 



32 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Thus he points out, that, after a stormy passage 
across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus meets a single 
demoniac coming out of the tombs, according to 
Mark and Luke, but meets with two, according to 
Matthew.^ So in the narrative of a certain cure of 
blindness said to be performed by Jesus at Jericho, 
Matthew duplicates the single blind man of Mark 
and Luke ; and Luke makes the cure take place on 
the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, whereas Matthew 
and Mark make it take place on the departure of 
Jesus out of Jericho.2 

But not only are such discrepancies and contradic- 
tions as these pointed out by Strauss, almost ad 
nauseam, all through the Gospels. Corresponding 
discrepancies and contradictions are pointed out by 
Zeller, Baur, Kuenen, and other so-called destructive 
critics, all through the Bible. 

Every biblical scholar is familiar, of course, with 
the manifold expedients resorted to by the traditional 
harmonists and apologists, to explain away these dis- 
crepancies and contradictions. But modern, as dis- 
tinguished from mediaeval, biblical scholars, have too 
much intellectual self-respect to take refuge in any 
of these harmonistic and apologistic subterfuges. 
They prefer, on the other hand, frankly to recognize 
the facts, and to say that the Bible doubtless does 
more or less abound with errors, and such errors as 
destroy the proposition that it is infallibly inspired. 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 33 

Thus, in a special test case, Professor Christlieb con- 
cedes that there are incompletenesses, inaccuracies, 
and non-agreement in details, in the Gospel histories 
of the Resurrection. He also assumes the general 
position, that faith depends not on the letter of Scrip- 
ture, but on the essential substance of the facts re- 
corded in it.3 But, as Renan well observes : " Errors 
of detail are no more compatible with the inspiration 
of the Holy Ghost than impostures are." 4 

Professor Tischendorf likewise says : " But the 
reply will be made to me, that with all this the con- 
tradictions of the Gospels are not solved. That such 
are, in fact, presented, though many have been arbi- 
trarily and erroneously alleged, I do not deny. . . . 
We have, of course, no right to affirm a mechanical 
inspiration of the Evangelists which secures against 
every error." 5 

Pressense affirms that there exists between the 
Synoptics and St. John a grave discrepancy, and one 
which has not yet received a satisfactory explanation, 
in relation to the date of the death of Jesus, — which 
event the fourth Gospel places on the 14th, and 
the Synoptics place on the 15th, of Nisan.^ This 
same writer insists that the first Gospel has assigned 
a wrong date to the celebration of the last passover.7 
He also reasons that whereas, in recordino: the ac- 
count of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, 
St. Matthew speaks of two asses, while the other 



34 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Evangelists mention only one, therefore the author 
of the first Gospel must have been guided by the 
parallelism of Zech. ix. 9, instead of giving us the 
correct statement of an ocular witness.^ " In fact," 
says Pressense, with reference to the general charac- 
teristics of the Synoptics : " In parts they are almost 
absolutely identical. And yet they show numerous 
differences. . . . Often two of the Synoptics agree 
together, while the third relates the same fact with 
very considerable variations. How explain these 
resemblances and these differences } The theory of 
literal inspiration cuts the knot of the difficulty, for 
those at least who can accept an arbitrary system 
which does violence to the best-estabUshed facts, 
and in reality identifies the action of the Divine 
Spirit with a mechanical or magical force. We are 
happily not reduced to this desperate resource." 9 

Thus, without making any further exhibition of 
the evidence, do we already come upon another 
broad line of demarcation between the modern and 
the mediaeval biblicists. The mediaeval maintain that 
the Bible is infallibly inspired. The modern recog- 
nize the prevalence of a greater or less degree of 
error all through the Bible. 

Nor is this recognition made by the destructive 
critics alone, who deny in toto that the Bible is in- 
spired. It is made equally by modern critics who 
contend that the Scriptures contain, and contain in 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 35 

the proper sense, a divine revelation. Here, for 
instance, Christlieb and Strauss, Tischendorf and 
Zeller, Pressense and Baur, Professor W. Robertson 
Smith and Dr. Kuenen, are perfectly at one. 

Thus far, however, the infallible inspiration of the 
Bible has been impugned chiefly with regard to what 
is characterized as the letter of the Scripture, in dis- 
tinction from its substance. But how about the 
substance .■* To illustrate. Professor W. Robertson 
Smith directs our attention to the various conflicting 
statements which are made concerning the same 
events in the Chronicles and Kings. ^° Take two 
or three examples. Chronicles affirm that Josiah's 
reformation began in his eighth year, before the 
law was found; Kings, that it began in his eigh- 
teenth year, and in pursuance of his having heard 
the law read after it had been discovered." Accord- 
ing to Chronicles, the expenses of the temple ser- 
vices were defrayed, in the early years of Jehoash, by 
a special collection levied upon all Judah ; according 
to Kings, they were defrayed, during the same period, 
as a burden upon the priestly revenues brought in 
by the worshippers. ^^ According to Chronicles, the 
local high places were abolished both by Asa and 
Jehoshaphat ; according to Kings, they were abol- 
ished neither by Asa nor Jehoshaphat. ^3 

Professor Smith admits that people may shake 
their heads at all this, and say that he is touching 



36 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

the historical character of the Book of Chronicles. 
But his answer is, that our first duty is to facts. 
And the facts are doubtless as he states them. 

Still further. Every one knows that for many cen- 
turies both the Catholic and the Protestant divines 
were accustomed to maintain that the Scriptures 
speak with a divine decisiveness in the department 
of physical science as well as in the domain of ethics 
and religion. But the Bible, at least as aforetimes 
interpreted, having proved to be a very fallible crite- 
rion in the former department, the general tendency 
of the mediaeval biblicists in our own times is to take 
refuge in the position that the Scriptures were never 
designed to be considered as a scientific treatise or 
authority at all. Thus the Vatican Decrees them- 
selves appear prepared to affirm that the Bible is 
infallibly inspired only in matters of faith and mor- 
als, h " It is of supreme importance, moreover," says 
Dr. Geikie, "that we demand no more from Scrip- 
ture than God intended it to yield. It was given to 
reveal him to us, and to make known his laws and 
will for our spiritual guidance, but not to teach us 
lessons in natural science." ^5 *' It must therefore be 
an error to look for the exactness of scientific state- 
ment in the Scriptures. They were given for a 
specific purpose, and for that only, and in other 
matters use only the simple language of the senses, 
which all ages, from the earliest to the latest, can 
understand." ^^ 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 3/ 

So far as this argument goes, it may be accepted 
as a more or less complete vindication of the scien- 
tific inexactitude of very much of the biblical lan- 
guage in relation to physical phenomena. Thus, 
when the Bible affirms that the earth is fixed, or 
depicts the sun as rising and setting, it would be a 
manifest injustice to insist, after the manner of the 
old clerical persecutors of Copernicus and Galileo, 
that the Bible designs to teach, as a matter of scien- 
tific verity, either that the earth is fixed, or that the 
sun does revolve about our little mundane sphere. 
In all such instances as these the Bible doubtless 
speaks of natural phenomena only incidentally, and 
in the current language of appearance, — not as they 
would be spoken about in a formal scientific treatise, 
but merely as they would be spoken about in any 
popular book, or even in our ordinary conversation. 

It materially militates against the present and the 
future fortunes of mediaeval biblicism, however, that 
this argument does not go far enough to cover all 
the case in hand. For the Bible not merely speaks 
in an incidental way concerning physical phenomena, 
with no pretensions to teach the scientific truth 
about them. It likewise speaks concerning such 
phenomena as its direct subject-matter, and after 
such a fashion also that it must either declare the 
precise scientific truth about them, or else declare a 
scientific falsity. For instance, says Principal Daw- 



38 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

son : ** With respect to the history of creation and 
the subsequent references to it, we cannot rest in the 
general statement that the Bible is not intended to 
teach science, any more than we can excuse inaccu- 
racy as to historical facts by the notion that the 
Bible [e.g., the Book of Chronicles] was not intended 
to teach history." '7 '< In the first chapter of Gene- 
sis we find an obvious attempt to give the method of 
creation, or at least its order in time. This narrative 
of creation trenches on the domain of science, and 
refers to matters not open to direct observation. It 
must therefore be a revelation from God, or a result 
of scientific induction or philosophical speculation, 
or a mere myth." ^^ Which is it ? 

On the whole, Professor Haeckel considers that 
this Jewish account of the creation contrasts favorably 
with the confused mythology of the creation current 
among most other ancient nations. But he points 
out and emphasizes the fact, that the record repre- 
sents the results of the great laws of organic devel- 
opment as being the effects, not of such laws, but of 
the direct actions of a constructing Creator.i9 And 
it is notably with reference to this special aspect of 
the record that Professor Huxley must be understood 
as speaking, when he affirms, first, that the account 
of the origin of things given in the Book of Genesis 
is utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine of evolu- 
tion ; and, secondly, that the evidence upon which the 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 39 

doctrine of evolution rests is incomparably stronger 
and better than that upon which the supposed author- 
ity of Genesis rests." ^° 

Now, whether one personally adopts the evolution 
theory of the origin of things, or still adheres to the 
special-creation theory, this much is certain : the 
evolution theory has already secured a very wide- 
spread acceptance, and is constantly gaining fresh 
adherents ; and that not merely among the profes- 
sional physicists, but likewise throughout the read- 
ing, thinking world at large. And, in the estimation 
of all such persons as these, the Book of Genesis 
stands convicted of a scientific misstatement of the 
most fundamental character. 

This conclusion is an ex parte one, indeed ; but it 
is a conclusion which no modern biblicist can fail to 
recognize, and mention with respect. 

Again : Principal Dawson frankly concedes these 
two things : first, that on no point has the Bible 
appeared to insist more strongly than on the crea- 
tion of the earth and its inhabitants in six ordinary 
days ; and, secondly, that .nothing can be more surely 
established, on the basis of scientific induction, than 
the vast periods which such creation must have con- 
sumed, according to the evidences revealed by the 
strata of the earth's crust.^i 

But Principal Dawson proposes to extricate the 
Bible from the charge of affirming a demonstrable 



40 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

scientific falsity on this subject, by having recourse 
to the well-known rejoinder of the traditional divines 
that the Hebrew word yom does not of necessity 
mean a natural day of twenty-four hours.22 This no 
Hebraist will of course dispute. Yom sometimes 
signifies a natural day, and sometimes signifies a 
much greater lapse of time. Thus in Gen. ii. 4, it 
covers the entire period of the creation, however 
prolonged that period may have been. But if it ever 
means a natural day of twenty-four hours anywhere 
in the Scripture, it means that in the connection 
now immediately in question. Each of the sixyoms 
is explicitly defined and limited as being a natural 
yom with a morning and an evening. Besides, the 
use of the word in Gen. ii. 2, 3, and in the Decalogue, 
is even more precise and fixed. God worked six 
yomSj and rested on the seventh. The Jews were to 
work six yoms, and rest on the seventh. And, ac- 
cording to all the best established laws of language, 
there is no more reason to say that yom means an 
indefinite geological epoch in the one instance than 
in the other. 

Now, if the author of Genesis did not originally 
design to declare that the six yoms in which God 
created the heavens and the earth were six natural 
days, he was clearly bound to say so. If he had any 
idea that the creative yom was a different thing from 
the ordinary yoin^ instead of confounding them, as he 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 4 1 

notably does in the Decalogue, his business was to 
distinguish them. And it was precisely as easy a 
thing for any Hebrew writer to do this, as it was for 
him to distinguish the Sabbath yom from the other 
yoins of the Jewish week, or the yom of the Atone- 
ment from the other yo7ns of the Jewish year. 

But the case is even worse than this. If the 
alleged inspired author of Genesis had any concep- 
tion that the work of creation consumed an almost 
indefinite lapse of ages, he might better not have 
employed the word yom at all in dividing up those 
ages into six special eras of development. Instead 
oi yom, the word o/am was the one for him to use. 
0/am conveys exactly that idea of almost indefinite 
eternalness which precisely corresponds to the mod- 
ern scientific conception of a great creative epoch. 
And if, in the Decalogue and in the other passages 
of Genesis now being considered, it had only been 
asserted that God created the heavens and the earth, 
not in six yo7ns, but in six clams, how delighted the 
mediaeval biblicists would have been to-day ! We 
should then have heard them proclaiming far and 
near that the Book of Genesis had anticipated by 
many thousands of years the latest demonstrations 
of modern physical science concerning the almost 
immeasurable periods during which the creation of 
the cosmos must have been in progress. Nor would 
they then have been without an overwhelming argu- 



42 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

ment.in favor of the supposition that, in so far at 
least, the Book of Genesis must have been inspired. 
As it is, Genesis says that the creation took place 
not in six olams, but in six^^;;^^-, and not in six crea- 
tive j/<?;;2i", but in "SAX yoms so limited and defined that 
it is perfectly apparent that six ordinary j^/^m^-, corre- 
sponding to those of the current Jewish week, were 
explicitly intended. And under these circumstances, 
the less there is said either about the scientific cor- 
rectness or the infallible divine inspiration of this 
portion of the Book of Genesis, the more respect 
thus much of the Bible will enjoy, and the less will 
be the ridicule to which the mediaeval biblicists stand 
exposed in the estimation at once of every modern 
physicist and every modern biblicist. 

Passing forward to the consideration of another 
detail of this so-called Mosaic account of the ori^n 
of things, Professor Huxley contemptuously observes 
that it would be an insult to ask any evolutionist 
whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting 
the fabrication of woman therein recorded. ^3 

Some time since the present writer directed the 
attention of a prominent physical scientist, who is 
also a conspicuous orthodox biblical apologist, to 
this remark of Huxley, with special reference to its 
bearing on the subject of biblical inspiration. We 
asked him in our letter whether he had any reply to 
make to Huxley here, and, if so, whether he would 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 43 

communicate such reply to us in private, with per- 
mission to make it public. His answer, italics and 
all, runs as follows : " I would not be referred to as 
having expressed any definite views on the subject. 
But you will find what seem to me the best and most 
judicious statements I have met with, in Macdonald's 
' Creation and the Fall.' He does not, however, 
define the precise physiological nature of excising 
the rib, or separable portion of the side, and building 
it into a woman. Very probably the original seer 
to whom the fact was revealed did not understand 
this any better than Huxley ; but he had, no doubt, 
more faith and less brutal views of humanity. We 
know absolutely nothing of the precise mode of ex- 
traction of either man or woman ; but to me the ori- 
gin of man from the dust of the earth, and of the 
woman from the man, appears infinitely more proba- 
ble than that of either from apes." 

But in saying all this our distinguished physicist, 
after the manner of a model mediaeval biblicist, man- 
ages to evade the real point at issue. The question 
is not whether he can explain the precise physiologi- 
cal nature of excising the rib, and building it into a 
woman, any more than it is whether he can explain 
the precise mode of the extraction of either man or 
woman. The question is, whether he is willing in 
this nineteenth century to come before the public, 
and openly declare, in his capacity of physical scien- 



44 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

tist, that he veritably believes that the Deity did, as 
a matter of scientific record, and even as a matter 
of divinely inspired scientific record, cause a deep 
sleep to fall upon Adam, and after any physiological 
process whatever excise one of Adam's ribs, and in 
any mode whatever build that rib into a woman. 
Put in this way, however, our eminent physicist does 
not care to be so mu.ch as referred to as having any 
definite views to express on the subject. But this 
much is not to be denied. Genesis affirms that 
Jehovah built Eve out of one of Adam's ribs, just 
as explicitly, just as circumstantially, and just as 
literally, as it affirms that Noah built an ark out of 
gopher-wood. 24 And if in these days we cannot 
conceive such a statement as this is to be scientifi- 
cally tenable, it matters little after that by what spe- 
cial name the narrative in which it occurs is called. 
For whether it be called a preposterous fable, or a 
palpable myth, or an integral portion of the Sacred 
Scriptures, it is equally fabulous and false. 

Among the ethical difficulties objected to the 
inspiration of the entire Old Testament, none hav^e 
been more frequently discussed perhaps than those 
presented by the imprecatory Psalms. 

If the reader needs to have his memory refreshed 
concerning the perfectly awful maledictions poured 
forth in these productions, he may read the one 
hundred and ninth Psalm by way of specimen. 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 45 

Is such a class of literature as this divinely in- 
spired ? If so, what are we to think of the Deity 
who could have inspired it ? 

To these questions various answers have been 
attempted by the orthodox divines. And, of these 
answers, the most plausible one is to the effect that 
the Scriptures are made up of two different elements, 
— the divine and the human, — and that the Psalms 
now being considered are accordingly to be regarded, 
as Dr. Hessy expresses it in his Boyle Lectures for 
1872, as the unrestrained expressions of the feel- 
ings of their respective writers. ^5 

But, from the standpoint of mediaeval biblicism, 
there is, first of all, the fundamental objection to this 
theory, that it practically abandons the position that 
these special Psalms are in any sense inspired. For, 
if they are to be looked upon as the unrestrained 
expressions of their respective human writers, mani- 
festly the Deity could have had no more to do with 
inspiring than restraining them. Besides, this theory 
makes a radically incorrect division of the Scriptures 
in its efforts to cover the case in hand. That is to 
say, instead of affirming that the Scriptures are 
composed of the divine element and the human, it 
would be requisite to affirm that they are composed 
of the divine element and the inhuman. For more 
inhuman expressions, in a more inhuman spirit, than 
these very Psalms abound with, it would be difficult 



46 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

to instance in any language under heaven, whether 
civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous. 

Nor are these imprecatory Psalms by any means 
the only portions of the Old Testament which are 
regarded in these days as not deserving, from their 
very nature, to be accorded a position among the 
divinely inspired portions of the Scriptures. For 
example, Professor W. Robertson Smith puts down 
the Song of Solomon as a mere lyrical drama, in 
which, according to most critics, the pure love of 
the Shulamite for her betrothed is exhibited as 
victorious over the seductions of Solomon and his 
harem.26 And M. Renan very pertinently inquires 
whether the author of this charming little poem ever 
could have suspected that he would one day be taken 
from the company of Anacreon to be set up as an 
inspired bard who sang of no love but the divine.^? 

Thus, even upon this very partial and very super- 
ficial examination of the evidence, do we arrive at 
two well-established conclusions. The first of these 
conclusions is, that the Bible, as a whole, was never 
so written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost as 
to be devoid of every sort of error. The second of 
these conclusions is, that a greater or less, proportion 
of the subject-matter of the Bible is of such a nature 
as utterly to preclude the supposition that the Holy 
Ghost ever could have had any thing whatever to do 
with its inspiration. 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. A^J 

The question accordingly arises, in what manner 
the entire subject-matter of the Bible ever came to 
be regarded as having been immediately inspired by 
the Deity himself. 

Every biblical scholar is aware, that, as a matter of 
historical fact, it was only by a very slow and gradual 
process that the various biblical books ever came, 
one after another, to be regarded even in the light 
of Scripture. Thus, in the days of Ezra, the Penta- 
teuch alone appears to have enjoyed any such distinc- 
tion. But by the close of the first Christian century 
the entire Old Testament literature seems to have 
arrived at that distinction likewise. It was not, how- 
ever, until the second half of the second century of 
the Christian era, that, as a whole, the New Testa- 
ment writings attained the eminence in question. 
But, from that time onward, the New Testament and 
the Old stand precisely on a parity. They are alike 
and indifferently cited as Scripture. They, together, 
make up the one sacred book — the one Holy Bible 
— of the Christian church at large. 

Now, as there was this slow and gradual historical 
development of the idea that all the various biblical 
books deserved to be dignified with the name of 
Scripture, so there was a corresponding historical 
development of the idea that all those books were 
originally delivered to certain chosen men by the 
immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost. If we 



48 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

are to credit Professor W. Robertson Smith, for 
example, there was a period when the Jews assumed 
the position that the law of Moses, in and by itself 
considered, contained the whole revelation of God's 
goodness and grace, which either had been given, 
or ever could be given. They considered that the 
Psalms, the Prophets, and the other books were in- 
spired indeed, but only in the sense of being authori- 
tative interpretations and applications of the law of 
Moses.28 But it will be perceived, that, even at this 
period, the conception that the entire Old Testament 
literature was in the fullest sense inspired, was slowly 
rising in the Jewish mind. And, when we come 
down to the days of Josephus, it had become natural, 
he says, to all Jews, immediately and from their birth, 
to esteem every one of the twenty-two books which 
he mentions as containing the decrees of God.29 
And presently we find Irenaeus declaring the entire 
Scripture — inclusive of the New Testament as well 
as the Old — to be perfect, insomuch as it was uttered 
by the Spirit and word of God. 3° 

Thus, beginning in a germinal way simply with 
the Pentateuch, or the law of Moses, the idea, first of 
scripturalness, and after that of divine inspiration, 
became gradually attached by almost imperceptible 
degrees, during the long lapse of ages, to the entire 
biblical literature which we possess to-day. 

We are now in a position to see the force of two 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 49 

or three considerations of cardinal importance. The 
first relates to the almost nonsensical reasons in view 
of which both the later Jews and early Christians 
frequently came to associate the idea of a divine 
inspiration with the composition of their sacred writ- 
ings. There was an opinion current among the an- 
cient fathers, for instance, that Ezra himself, with 
five scribes to write at his dictation, within the 
period of forty days reproduced the entire Old Testa- 
ment, in so far as it had been either destroyed or 
injured at the time of the Captivity. But the source 
of this superstition, Professor W. Robertson Smith 
assures us, was merely a fable to that effect existing 
in the Book of Esdras. The same authority informs 
us that the account of the origin of the Septuagint 
current in the days of Jesus was full of fabulous 
embellishments designed to establish the authority 
of the version as having been miraculously composed 
under divine inspiration. 3^ The very additions to 
the Hebrew text ventured upon by the Septuagint 
interpreters were considered to have been put in by 
the express authority of the Holy Ghost.32 Now, all 
this is simply childish ; and so very childish that we 
must manifestly be upon our guard against accepting 
the entire biblical literature as having been divinely 
inspired, merely because it was so regarded whether 
by the later Jews or early Christians. 

Another circumstance to note and emphasize is 



50 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

this. The idea that the entire biblical literature is 
divinely inspired does not by any means inhere in 
that literature itself. On the contrary, it is an idea 
about the Bible, as a whole, which gradually grew up 
in the imagination of the later Jews and early Chris- 
tians, in the manner pointed out above. In other 
words, while certain portions of the Scriptures pro- 
fess to be inspired, other portions, and other very 
considerable portions, do not profess to be inspired. 

In the New Testament department this is true, for 
instance, of the book of the Acts. The author of 
this book does not begin his record with the affirma- 
tion that he is about to write it in the capacity of a 
kind of amanuensis of the Holy Ghost. The key-note 
which he rather strikes is simply this : "The former 
treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus 
began to do and teach." On the supposition of 
the mediaeval biblicists, which may for the moment 
be adopted, that the writer here is Luke, and that 
the former treatise to which he refers is the Gos- 
pel of Luke, we turn to the prologue of that Gospel 
for further information with relation to the point 
in hand. But, according to this prologue, the author 
of St. Luke's Gospel does not have the slightest 
suspicion that he is about to indite it under all the 
safeguards against every sort of error implied in 
the supervising inspiration of the Deity himself. He 
merely conceives himself to be one out of many con- 



THE I XS PI RATI OX OF THE BIBLE. 5 I 

temporaneous writers who have undertaken to put on 
record the general subject-matter of his Gospel, and 
thinks it quite enough to say, by way of establishing 
his personal qualifications for the faithful execution 
of his task, that he was himself, from the very begin- 
ning, among the eye-witnesses of those things, his 
version of which he was about to write out systemati- 
cally for the confirmation of the faith of his most 
excellent friend Theophilus. In like manner, if we 
compare St. John xix. 35 and xxi. 27, what do we 
discover? We discover merely that the author of 
the fourth Gospel declares himself to be, not a 
divinely inspired historian, but simply the disciple 
who wrote these things and knew that his testimony 
was true. In a word, you will search the four Gos- 
pels in vain to find them putting forth the internal 
claim of being divinely inspired records of the acts 
and words of Jesus. The Jesus of the four Gospels 
habitually speaks and acts, indeed, in the capacity of 
a divine messenger, and even of a divine revelator. 
But the Gospel records of Jesus' acts and words no 
more profess to be divinely inspired than do the cur- 
rent reports made in our modern newspapers of the 
movements and speeches of our leading public men. 

And as of the New Testament, so of the Old. 
Not merely entire passages, entire books, do not pro- 
fess to be inspired. 

Let us, therefore, lay aside the altogether gratui- 



52 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

tons assumption of the later Jews and early Chris- 
tians, that these portions of the Bible are inspired, 
and look at them from their own standpoint; namely, 
that they are nothing more than ordinary human 
compositions. 

Regarded from this point of view, the undeniable 
discrepancies and contradictions with which our pres- 
ent Gospels abound do not present the slightest 
embarrassment to the modern biblicist. No four 
human writers will narrate their several accounts of 
the same events without a greater or less degree 
of divergence in relation to the details. 

The same remark applies with reference to the 
various conflicting statements which we have seen 
to exist between the Chronicles and Kings. For 
neither do the Chronicles nor Kings any more pro- 
fess to be divinely inspired histories than do the his- 
tories of Gibbon or Macaulay. 

So with regard to the imprecatory Psalms. The 
Psalms themselves do not pretend to be inspired. 
Aside from the single expression, "The Lord said 
unto my Lord," a ''Thus saith the Lord" does not 
occur, so far as we recall, throughout the whole col- 
lection. "The Greek doctrine of the inspiration of 
the poet," Professor W. Robertson Smith observes, 
"never led to the recognition of certain poems as 
sacred scriptures. But the Indian Vedas were re- 
garded in later times as infallible, eternal, divine." ^^ 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 53 

In like manner the Psalms, originally claiming to be 
only a portion of the merely human religious poetry 
of Israel, gradually became converted, in the super- 
stitious imagination of the later Jews, into the ver- 
itable Jewish Vedas, — sacred, eternal, and divine. 
But, looked at in their true light as purporting to be 
only purely human ancient Jewish poetry, the impre- 
catory Psalms cast no reflection whatever on the 
Deity. David may or may not have personally com- 
posed them. But, even if he did, the Holy Ghost 
stands no more responsible for their monstrous male- 
dictions than he does for the murderous and adulter- 
ous animus of the letter which David wrote to Joab, 
saying : " Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest 
battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smit- 
ten, and die." 34 

Another pertinent example would be the Song of 
Songs. Not only does this poem expressly purport 
to be Solomon's, not the Lord's. Even so recently 
as the apostolical era, R. Akiba hurled his theological 
anathemas at those among the Jews who sang it with 
a quavering voice in the banqueting house, as if it 
were a common lay.35 As a mere Song of Solomon, 
or, as other critics maintain, of some other ancient 
Jewish writer, modern criticism would not incline to 
speak of it severely. But, as the Holj^ Ghost lays no 
claim whatever to its authorship, modern criticism 
does not feel at any greater liberty to foist its author- 



54 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

ship upon the Holy Ghost than it does to foist upon 
the Holy Ghost the authorship of any corresponding 
amatory writing, which some critics regard as merely 
sensuous, but pure, and other critics regard as both 
sensual and positively immoral. 

Nothing, however, could be more foreign from 
the present writer's purpose than to throw out the 
slightest intimation that the biblical hterature does 
not contain its inspired elements as well as its un- 
inspired. If certain very considerable sections of the 
Bible do not profess to be inspired, other very con- 
siderable sections do profess to be inspired. And all 
that we maintain is simply this : Only those portions 
of the Bible which profess to be inspired can come 
legitimately before the modern biblicist for investi- 
gation when he comes specifically to consider in 
how far the general subject-matter of the Bible is 
inspired. Not that the mere profession of a biblical 
book, or portion of a book, that it is inspired, would 
be, in and by itself considered, sufficient proof of its 
inspiration. What we merely mean to affirm is, that 
if a given biblical book, or portion of a book, does 
not so much as claim to be inspired, no presumption 
is raised in favor of its inspiration : no starting-point 
is offered even to begin the formal consideration of 
its inspiration. 

In a subsequent volume which the writer hopes to 
put forth on the great general subject of Supernatural 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 55 

Religion, he will endeavor to give a detailed state- 
ment of the reasons why he firmly holds that the 
Bible contains, as well as professes to contain, an 
element which is the form of a direct divine revela- 
tion. But his immediate object — which is pre- 
liminary, not final — is abundantly secured if he has 
simply succeeded in vindicating the general assertion 
that the current conceptions of the mediaeval bibli- 
cists concerning the divine inspiration of the entire 
biblical literature are fundamentally at fault ; and 
that they consequently require a revision of the most 
revolutionary character. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 

We have already seen that our present Gospels do 
not profess to be divinely inspired histories of the 
acts and teaching of Jesus ; but that, at the highest, 
they purport to be merely ordinary human histories, 
composed by his contemporaries and companions. 

We have now to consider whether they were actu- 
ally written by those original disciples of Jesus whose 
respective names they bear. 

And, in the first place, however much modern bibli- 
cists may disagree about other things, they concur in 
the view, that, as Renan remarks, a proper name at 
the head of such works does not mean much.* 
Thus, in the Old Testament department. Professor 
W. Robertson Smith admits that all of the titles 
of the Psalms would be authoritative, if it were not 
for the fact that some of the titles, not being so old 
as the Psalms themselves, must be regarded as the 
mere conjectures of the individual copyists. It 
therefore becomes important, he says, to ask whether 
all the titles now found in the Old Testament go back 
56 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 5/ 

to the original authors, or whether some of them are 
not the merest surmises of the later copyists. And 
this question is naturally suggested, he maintains, by 
what we find in manuscripts of the New Testament, 
many of which prefix the name of Paul to the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, though it is quite certain that the 
oldest copies left the Epistle anonymous.^ 

The mediaeval biblicists here interpose the objec- 
tion, however, that to write a book in the name of 
another, and to give it out to be his, is to perpetrate 
a deliberate literary forgery ; and such a forgery as 
would be destructive of all trustworthiness in the 
book itself. 

To this Dean Stanley answers, that it is as absurd 
to charge the biblical writers with forgery because 
they very frequently wrote under fictitious names — 
as under the pseudonym of David, Solomon, or Daniel 
— as it would be to characterize the poet Burns as a 
forger because he places his address to the army of 
Bannockburn in the mouth of Robert Bruce.3 

But neither by the mediaeval biblicists, nor even 
by Dean Stanley, is the case here correctly stated, 
as it is understood by modern biblicists at large. 
For the allegation of the latter critics is not that 
very many of the biblical books were originally put 
forth in the name of a fictitious author. They 
merely maintain that the great majority of the 
biblical books, particularly in the Old Testament 



58 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

division, were originally put forth anonymously, and 
that some subsequent editor or copyist, wishing to 
cover the contents of a given book with the authority 
of some great name in the ancient Jewish or early 
Christian annals, gave to the book a fictitious title. 
And, regarded in this light, it will be perceived that 
the charge of forgery does not have the slightest 
pertinency when it is applied to the subject-matter 
of the book, — however apposite it maybe when it 
is directed against the alleged authorship of the pro- 
duction. 

There is no sufficient historical evidence, therefore, 
that the formulae, " according to Matthew," ** accord- 
ing to Mark," *' according to Luke," ** according to 
John," are headings prefixed to our respective Gospels 
by the original authors of our Gospels. On the other 
hand, it is quite as probable that these compositions 
were originally put forth just as anonymously as 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and that these headings 
were afterwards prefixed to them by some editor 
or copyist. 

Again : among early ecclesiastical writers, Papias 
is the first who mentions the tradition that Matthew 
and Mark composed written records of the life and 
teaching of Jesus; 4 Irenaeus the first who ascribes 
the authorship of the third Gospel to Luke by name ; 5 
and Theophilus the first who cites an undeniable 
passage from the fourth Gospel in connection with 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 59 

the name of John.^ But Papias was bishop of 
Hieropolis in the first half of the second Christian 
century,7 Irenaeus bishop of Lyons A. D. 178,^ and 
Theophilus bishop of Antioch A. D. 179.9 

Roughly speaking, therefore, it is not earlier than 
from A. D. 150 to A. D. 175 that we find written 
records of the history of Jesus even traditionally 
accredited to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

What gave rise to that tradition } Did it rest on 
any more substantial basis than the mere headings 
of the Gospels, which were themselves presumably 
fictitious } 

But if our Gospels were at least not demonstrably 
composed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, possi- 
bly they may have been composed by contemporaries 
of Jesus. That much, at the lowest, is once asserted 
in the third Gospel, and twice asserted in the fourth. 
Still, whether we are to credit this assertion or not, 
we shall be in a better position to judge after we 
have given a cursory consideration to the question of 
the probable date of the composition of our Gospels. 

All critics, indeed, agree with Strauss that thus 
much is certain : that towards the end of the second 
century after Christ the same four Gospels which we 
now possess are found in their present written form, 
both fully recognized in the Church, and freely 
quoted in the then current ecclesiastical writings, — 
particularly in those of Irenaeus in Gaul, Clement in 



6o THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Alexandria, and Tertullian in Carthage. ^° But how 
much sooner than the end of the second century our 
present written Gospels existed as we have them in 
our hands to-day, is more or less a matter of conjec- 
ture. 

Tischendorf, however, endeavors to carry the argu- 
ment in favor of their earlier existence back even to 
the apostolical era, by establishing a connecting link 
between Irenaeus and Polycarp." 

Polycarp, it will be remembered, was a contempo- 
rary both of the original disciples of Jesus and also 
of Irenaeus. And, in a letter to one Florinus, Ire- 
naeus, among other things, observes : " When I was a 
child, I saw thee at Smyrna, in Asia Minor, at the 
house of Polycarp. ... I can recall . . . his frequent 
references to St. John, and to others who had seen 
our Lord : how he used to repeat from memory their 
discourses which he had heard from them concerning 
our Lord, his miracles and mode of teaching ; and 
how, being instructed himself by those who were 
eye-witnesses of the word, there was in all that he 
said a strict agreement with the Scriptures." 

And, in view of this, Professor Tischendorf de- 
mands to know who will venture any longer to ques- 
tion whether Irenaeus had ever heard a word from 
Polycarp about the Gospel of John. 

It so happens, however, that Polycarp, as reported 
above by Irenaeus, does not say a single word about 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 6 1 

the real point at issue ; namely, about a Gospel which 
had been reduced to writing so early as the apostoli- 
cal era, whether by St. John, St. Matthew, St. Mark, 
St. Luke, or by any other eye-witness of the career 
of Jesus. He speaks, indeed, of hearing from such 
eye-witnesses discourses concerning the miracles and 
mode of teaching of our Lord, which he could still 
repeat from memory. But those discourses were 
manifestly verbal ones, not written ones. Had Poly- 
carp only said that he had heard St. John, St. Mat- 
thew, St. Mark, and St. Luke read the original 
manuscripts of our present Gospels, that would in- 
deed signify something to the purpose of mediaeval 
biblicism. And if, up to the time of their death, 
those apostles had, as a matter of fact, produced any 
such manuscripts, it is scarcely to be conceived that 
so intimate a companion of them as Polycarp pur- 
ports to be should have been altogether excluded 
from their confidence concerning the very existence 
of those manuscripts ; or that, having been made 
aware of their existence, he should not have men- 
tioned their existence in the hearing of Irenaeus. 

The fair inference, therefore, is, that, to the best 
knowledge and recollection of Polycarp, no disciple 
and contemporary of Jesus had ever written out a 
formal history of Jesus. 

The effort is made, again, to establish a compara- 
tively early date for the composition of our Gospels 



62 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

by appealing to the abundant quotations made from 
them, as it is alleged, in ecclesiastical writers of the 
first part of the second Christian century. But some 
of these writers do not mention any source from 
which they make their quotations, and hence leave it 
a perfectly open question whether they quote from 
any written Gospels, or only quote from traditions 
appertaining to the history of Jesus which still existed 
merely in an oral form. 

Be that, however, as it may, Justin Martyr cer- 
tainly wrote two Apologies, or Defences of Christians 
and Christianity, addressed to the Roman Emperor 
and Senate. The first of these was probably written 
about A. D. 147, and the second somewhat later. ^^ 

In these Apologies Justin speaks of Memoirs or 
Memorabilia of Christ, composed by the apostles and 
by companions of the apostles, and which were also 
called sometimes the Gospels, and sometimes collec- 
tively the Gospel. 

Whether these apostolical Memoirs of Jesus which 
Justin mentions were or were not identical with our 
present Gospels, is one of the most hotly contested 
questions connected with modern Gospel criticism. 
And, in the first place, there is only the greatest 
vagueness expressed by the merely general and wholly 
indefinite title. Memoirs of the Apostles. Had Jus- 
tin only subdivided this running title, and said here 
that he quoted from Matthew, there that he quoted 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 6^ 

from Mark, here that he quoted from Luke, and 
there that he quoted from John, much more precision 
would have been imparted to his evidence in its bear- 
ing on the special point before us. It is, however, 
only in a single instance that Justin approaches to 
any such precision : that is when he speaks, not in 
a general way of the Memoirs of the Apostles, but 
in a specific way of the Memoirs of Peter. 

Now, it is maintained by one class of critics that 
by these Memoirs of Peter, Justin must have designed 
to designate the same Gospel as our present Gospel 
of Mark. For, say these critics, to begin with, Peter 
was regarded by the ancients as having furnished the 
materials for the second Gospel, which Mark merely 
wrote down at the dictation of Peter ; and hence it is 
not unlikely that in the days of Justin the second 
Gospel may have borne the name of Peter, who fur- 
nished its materials, though it subsequently became 
called after the name of Mark, who had originally 
acted only in the capacity of an amanuensis to Peter 
in its composition. Besides, these critics continue, 
when Justin particularly specifies the Gospel of Peter 
as the source of his information, he speaks of our 
Saviour as changing the name of Peter, and of his 
giving to James and John the name Boanerges, which 
are circumstances mentioned, so far as we are aware, 
exclusively in the Gospel of Mark. 

But a large number of opposing critics contend, 



64 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

that, when Justin refers to the Gospel of Peter, he 
cannot refer to our Gospel of Mark, but must refer 
to another and very different work, which, under 
various names, as under those of the Gospel accord- 
ing to Peter, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 
and the like, was circulated more or less extensively 
throughout the early churches. 

Now, no one denies that there was a Gospel of 
Peter, which was not our Gospel of Mark, but which 
was condemned by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, as 
containing objectionable matter, and pronounced by 
Eusebius to be an evidently spurious production. 
But while there was a tradition, as we have seen, 
that Peter furnished Mark with the subject-matter of 
the second Gospel, the hypothesis is purely conjec- 
tural, or, at the highest, is strictly inferential, that the 
Gospel of Mark was ever cited, whether by Justin or 
by. any other ancient ecclesiastical writer, under the 
name of the Gospel of Peter. And, until the lost 
Gospel of Peter has been recovered, it never can be 
demonstrated that it did not contain, in common 
with our Gospel of Mark, precisely those passages 
which Justin quotes in relation to the changes made 
by Jesus in the names of Peter, James, and John, 
and which, in the absence of the Gospel of Peter, 
have been preserved to us only in the Gospel of 
Mark. And, under all these circumstances, it be- 
comes an exceedingly problematical question with 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 65 

the perfectly impartial modern biblicist, whether, 
when Justin speaks of the Gospel of Peter, he means 
the lost Gospel of Peter, or means our Gospel of 
Mark, which, for the reasons assigned above, might 
at one time have possibly been called the Gospel of 
Peter as well as the Gospel of Mark. 

But the main argument in favor of the supposi- 
tion that the apostolical Memoirs mentioned by Jus- 
tin are the same as our present Gospels remains to 
be considered. This argument is very clearly stated 
by Dr. Ezra Abbot when he affirms, first, that Jus- 
tin nowhere expressly quotes the Memoirs for any 
thing which is not substantially stated in our Gospels ; 
and, secondly, that there is nothing in the deviations 
of Justin's quotations from exact correspondence 
with our Gospels as regards either matters of fact, or 
the report of the words of Jesus, which may not be 
abundantly paralleled in the writings of the Christian 
fathers who used our four Gospels as alone authori- 
tative. ^3 

First, then, there can be no dispute that the quo- 
tations made by Justin from his Memoirs are sub- 
stantially the same as they would have been had he 
quoted from our Gospels. For, while these quotations, 
regarded from a merely verbal point of view, deviate 
in almost every instance to a greater or less degree 
from corresponding passages in our Gospels, never- 
theless not even the author of " Supernatural Reli- 



66 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

gion " is able to gainsay that they usually agree in 
substance with such corresponding passages. And 
if merely substantial, as distinguished from strictly 
verbal, accuracy in quoting from our Gospels, would 
prove that Justin Martyr, in employing his apostoli- 
cal Memoirs, did not employ our Gospels, it would 
equally prove that Eusebius and many other ancient 
Christian writers could not have used our Gospels 
as the source of their citations. Thus Dr. Abbot 
instances a single passage which is quoted by Euse- 
bius not less than eleven times, but each time with 
some verbal variation. ^4 But every scholar knows 
that Eusebius, and the other Christian fathers re- 
ferred to, just as undeniably had our present Gospels 
before them, or at least in their possession, as has 
any modern biblicist. 

The supposition, therefore, is, that the earlier eccle- 
siastical writers were strangers to our modern cus- 
tom of literal transcription from our Gospels, and 
that, when they had occasion to cite our Gospels as 
authority, they either quoted merely from memory, 
or only aimed to give the point and substance of a 
passage. 

Let it be assumed, however, for the purpose of 
the argument, that Justin Martyr did not so employ 
his Memoirs. In other words, let it be assumed that 
his habit of citation was that of modern biblicists, 
— that when he quoted from his Memoirs he did so 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 6/ 

verbatim^ et literatim, et punctiiatim. It would still 
remain true, that, while verbally different from our 
Gospels, his Memoirs were yet identical with our 
Gospels in their main outlines and in their substance 
and substratum. Moreover, Justin says that his Me- 
moirs were statedly read in the Christian churches, 
or rather in the Sabbath Christian gatherings of his 
time,^5 and that they contained every thing concern- 
ing our Saviour Jesus Christ. ^^ All the probabili- 
ties, therefore, are, that his Memoirs continued to 
remain, and be handed down within the inner Chris- 
tian circles, as the recognized standard and exponent 
of the acts and teaching of Jesus, and that it was 
mainly, and more or less immediately, from them, that 
our present Gospels were eventually produced. 

As early as the days of Justin, therefore, our pres- 
ent Gospels must have ceased to exist in a merely 
written form, and been substantially reduced to 
writing, — passing, however, still under the general 
name of the Memoirs of the Apostles. After this 
they must have undergone some changes indeed, but 
changes of a merely minor nature. Thus, on the 
conjectural supposition that Justin quoted from them 
as they existed in his age, verbally and literally, 
they must subsequently have passed through all 
those strictly verbal transformations which would be 
requisite to bring them into an exact verbal corre- 
spondence with our Gospels. A certain amount of 



68 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

subject-matter must likewise have been eliminated 
from them, such as the traditions that Christ was 
born in a cave, that the Magi came from Arabia, 
and that Jesus, as a carpenter, made ploughs and 
yokes, ^7 — subject-matter that would seem to have 
been in Justin's Memoirs, but which certainly has 
not survived them in our Gospels. Another change 
relates to the name of Justin's Gospels. By this we 
mean, that instead of continuing to be called merely, 
in a general way, the Memoirs of Christ, by the 
apostles and companions of the apostles, this title 
became in due process of time subdivided and dis- 
tributed, so that each separate Gospel had its own 
special apostolical author, namely, Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. 

In this department of modern biblical criticism, 
where almost every thing is to some extent conjec- 
tural, we have accordingly arrived at a few provis- 
ional conclusions. And, in the first place, it would 
appear to be nearly certain that no original apostle, 
or disciple, or contemporary of Jesus, produced, in a 
manuscript form, any written record of the history 
of Jesus. On the other hand, this history would 
seem to have existed only in the shape of strictly 
oral traditions until the post-apostolical era had not 
merely opened, but to some degree advanced. Just 
when these oral traditions first began to be fixed in 
writing, however, is quite another question. But 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 69 

since their composition was substantially completed 
in the days of Justin, the fair inference would be, 
that the initial stages of their composition must 
have commenced considerably before the days of 
Justin. In a general way also an apostolical author- 
ship had already begun to be ascribed to these pro- 
ductions prior to the period of Justin. And when 
we come down to the days of Papias, Irenaeus, and 
Theophilus, — A.D. 150 to A.D. 175, — each of the 
Gospels had then acquired for itself its own special 
apostle for an author. After which it only remains to 
add, that all classes of critics are agreed that by the 
conclusion of the second century our present written 
Gospels had passed through the final stages of their 
literary development ; had ceased to undergo any 
further changes, whether as to their language or their 
subject-matter; had become permanently fixed in 
writing as we possess them in our hands to-day. 

Assuming the general correctness of these pro- 
visional conclusions, therefore, both the authorship 
of our Gospels, and the precise period of their com- 
position, are among the unsolved and insolvable 
problems of modern biblical speculation. Still the 
period of their composition appears to have extended, 
say from some time before the conclusion of the first 
century after Christ, until some time after the mid- 
dle of the second century. And, as to authorship, 
we can form nothing beyond the vaguest surmises 



70 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

as to how many different editors and copyists there 
must have been who at one time and another, and 
in one way or another, contributed either verbally 
or substantially, or both, towards casting and fixing 
them in their present form. 

And yet, by whomsoever and whensoever our Gos- 
pels ' were composed, they still possess a certain 
degree of historical value when regarded in the light 
of professed ancient histories of Jesus. 

Taking up these documents, therefore, quite inde- 
pendently of all illusive questions about alike their 
authorship and date of composition, we will in the 
next place endeavor to arrive at some approximate 
estimate of their intrinsic historical worth. 

It is well known that a certain very able and influ- 
ential school of modern critics deny their historical 
character not partially, but wholly, in so far as they 
narrate the supernatural. And, while this feature 
of supernaturalism is perfectly intolerable to these 
critics even in the first three Gospels, it is superla- 
tively intolerable to them as it is presented in the 
fourth. As Strauss has it, in the presence of this 
latter Gospel it is incumbent upon the modern anti- 
supernaturalists either to break in pieces all their 
weapons, or force it to disavow all claims to histori- 
cal validity, ^s 

Any thing like an adequate consideration of the 
various hypotheses which have been advanced to 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 7 1 

explain away the supernatural relations of the sev- 
eral Gospels as utterly unhistorical cannot be at- 
tempted, however, either in thi^ chapter, or even in 
the present volume. On the other hand,, the subject 
is so large a one that its discussion must, of neces- 
sity, be deferred until we can find scope to take it 
up in a formal manner in our projected work on 
Supernatural Religion. 

The supernaturalism of the Gospels being thus 
for the time altogether eliminated from the problem, 
the question arises : In how far are our Gospels his- 
torical ? or are they historical at all ? 

The greatest difficulty here presented to the 
modern biblicist is, what historical position is to be 
accorded to the Gospel of John. And, in the first 
place, it is maintained by the most pronounced oppo- 
nents of this Gospel, as by F. C. Baur and Strauss, 
that it more or less abounds with conscious and 
intentional fiction. But by some of these opponents 
the effort has been made to separate the Gospel into 
two distinct elements, one of which is comparatively 
historical, the other of which is little better than 
fictitious. These elements are, first, the narrative 
portions of the Gospel, and, secondly, those portions 
of the Gospel which purport to give the discourses 
of Jesus. But if either of these portions is historical, 
and the other one is not so, which one is the histori- 
cal, and which one is not the historical } Weisse, 



72 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

for instance, says that the discourses are historical,^9 
and that the narratives are fictitious; Renan — vice 
versa.^° Now, Strauss concedes, that, if there can 
be degrees of impossibility, the genuineness of the 
speeches imputed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel is 
to some extent more inconceivable than the genuine- 
ness of its narrative portions. At the same time he 
insists on the untenableness of the entire hypothesis 
that this Gospel can be divided into the above-men- 
tioned elements, one of which is historical and the 
other not historical, and contends that conscious 
and intentional fiction is characteristic alike of its 
narrations and discourses.^i 

It is fortunately possible for us, however, wholly 
to extricate ourselves from this entanglement by 
putting aside the narrative portions of the fourth 
Gospel altogether, and considering only the dis- 
courses. For, comparatively speaking, we have but 
an incidental interest to-day in the merely external 
facts and features of the history of Jesus. What 
most deeply concerns us, and what we particularly 
wish to know, relates the rather to those ideas and 
principles of personal living, both outer and inner, 
which Jesus did or did not bequeath us. 

On the whole, therefore, are the speeches accred- 
ited to Jesus in the fourth Gospel genuine, or spuri- 
ous } 

And, to begin with, it is at least a notorious fact 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 73 

that, in addition to our four canonical Gospels, the 
early Christian literature contained several other 
Gospels which are now designated as apocryphal, 
and rejected as being false and manufactured repre- 
sentations, or rather misrepresentations, of the acts 
and words of Jesus. 

One of the principal reasons assigned, as by Pro- 
fessor George P. Fisher, for the rejection of these 
apocryphal Gospels, is that they present no claim to 
our attention on the score of age, — all of them hav- 
ing been produced at a demonstrably later date than 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 22 But this is an 
objection which applies with no inconsiderable force 
as well against the historical character of the fourth 
Gospel in comparison with the Synoptics. For all 
modern critics, including Professor Fisher ^3 and 
Professor Tischendorf,24 are perfectly agreed that 
the fourth Gospel certainly saw the light after the 
other three. 

It is alleged again that the apocryphal Gospels 
are at a world-wide remove from the canonical Gos- 
pels in the character of their contents.^s But it is 
likewise alleged, to use almost the exact language 
of Canon Westcott, that it is impossible to pass from 
the synoptical Gospels to that of St. John without 
feeling that the transition involves the passage from 
one world of thought to another. ^6 With special 
reference to the point now before us, M. Renan 



74 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

insists, indeed, that the fourth Gospel puts into the 
mouth of Jesus discourses the tone, the style, the 
manner, the doctrines, of which have nothing in com- 
mon with the discourses reported in the Synoptics.27 

Since, however, no one disputes that a broad 
and fundamental diversity obtains between the dis- 
courses in question, there is no occasion to enlarge 
any further on this special aspect of the subject, 
beyond, perhaps, remarking that the most casual 
reader of the Gospels must have observed it for 
himself, or that, if he has not done so, he may readily 
observe it by contrasting the Sermon on the Mount, 
for example, with any extended report of the osten- 
sible words of Jesus which may be selected at random 
in the Gospel of John. 

It may here be interposed, however, that we are 
overlooking the real point of the argument against the 
genuineness of the apocryphal Gospels, as contrasted 
with that of the canonical Gospels, so far as the 
marked dissimilarity of their respective contents is 
concerned. For it is not a full and correct state- 
ment of the case when it is merely said that the 
apocryphal Gospels differ from the canonical Gos- 
pels in the sense that the fourth Gospel differs 
from the Synoptics. The discourses of the fourth 
Gospel differ from those of the Synoptics very nota- 
bly, indeed ; but the former do not differ from the 
latter as sense does from nonsense. The element 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 75 

of dignity and elevation of thought is at least 
a common factor between the speeches of Jesus re- 
corded in the Synoptics and the speeches accredited 
to Jesus in the fourth Gospel. But as contrasted 
with that of the canonical Gospels, a preponderating 
proportion of the subject-matter of the apocryphal 
Gospels is absurd and frivolous, — is mainly made up 
of almost silly tales about the nativity and infancy 
of Jesus, the glories of his mother, and other kindred 
stories, which are too palpably fabulous to merit any 
attention. 28 

Over against this, it is to be remembered, that, 
among other things, the mighty personality and 
influence of Jesus imparted to his disciples and 
adherents a marked literary impulse after he was 
gone. And the manifestations of this literary im- 
pulse were as manifold as were the various classes 
of minds which yielded to its sway. Thus, in one 
direction, it resulted in the Pauline Epistles ; in 
another, it gave rise to the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
and, in yet another, it produced the Book of Revela- 
tion. And if, in its action upon a certain class of 
minds innately inclined to find expression in the 
fabulous and frivolous, it resulted in an apocryphal 
literature after the general type either of the Gospel 
of Peter or the Gospel of Nicodemus, for example, 
it is quite within the limits of the possible that in its 
action upon a certain other class of minds, innately 



'j6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

inclined to be contemplative and metaphysical, it 
might have resulted in an apocryphal production 
answering to the general description of the Gospel 
of John. 

Now, in all this, we do not design positively to 
affirm that the fourth Gospel, and notably that the 
discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel, are demon- 
strably unhistorical. We merely mean to declare, 
and to declare with the greatest emphasis, that there 
is no scholarly method of establishing their historical 
character beyond a reasonable basis of doubt. Not 
that this doubt will be shared by all modern biblicists, 
but that it will be shared by a very large proportion 
of them. In a word, the question of the authenticity 
of St. John's Gospel has already been discussed back- 
ward and forward, and over and over again, now for 
nearly half a century. And Dr. Ezra Abbot is per- 
fectly correct when he states the aggregate result of 
this discussion to be, that, among scholars of equal 
learning and ability, as between Hilgenfeld, Keim, 
Scholten, Hausrath, and Renan, on the one hand, 
and Godet, Beyschlag, Luthardt, Weiss, and Light- 
foot, on the other, opinions are yet divided, with a 
tendency, at least in Germany, toward the denial of 
its genuineness. 29 

But it is a subject for congratulation that modern 
investigation into the historical character of the syn- 
optical Gospels has for its aggregate outcome some- 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. ^J 

thing more assured than a mere division of opinion. 
For, even among the so-called destructive critics, it 
now passes as a sort of common postulate, or axiom, 
that, aside from their elements of supernaturalism, 
and despite their hiata and their errors, we still pos- 
sess in the synoptical Gospels a generally correct 
historical preservation, so far as it goes, if not of the 
acts, yet of the teachings, of Jesus. 

With regard to the synoptical teaching of Jesus, 
however, it is important to note that the destructive 
critics all, or nearly all, accord the first rank to 
Matthew. Thus Strauss affirms, that, notwithstand- 
ing all doubt upon individual points, every one must 
admit that we have the speeches of Jesus in the first 
Gospel, though not unmixed with later additions and 
modifications, yet in a purer form than in any of the 
others.30 And Renan does not hesitate to say that 
Matthew clearly deserves unlimited confidence as 
regards the discoursesJ^ 

In undertaking to determine, therefore, what is the 
actual historical teaching of Jesus, unless we would 
enter upon an almost interminable controversy at 
the very outset, it would be requisite to assume, as 
a common basis of investigation with those who 
reject the discourses of John, that the synoptical 
discourses, and particularly that the Logia recorded 
in Matthew, are to be regarded as the standard. 
Whether the discourses of John are likewise to be 



y8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

taken into the account, or not, is a question which 
would remain for subsequent examination. And the 
decision of this question would hinge mainly on the 
conclusion which we might arrive at concerning this 
one thing ; namely, whether the discourses of John 
are merely divergent from those of the other Gospels, 
or are so radically at variance as to be absolutely in- 
compatible with those of the other Gospels. 

But this is an aspect of the subject which can be 
adequately discussed only by a detailed comparison 
of the synoptical discourses with the discourses of 
John on all their leading topics, as on that of ethics, 
on that of theism, on that of the person of Jesus, and 
the like. 

For the execution of such a task as this, however, 
the author has not space remaining in the present 
chapter ; although he hopes in some measure to 
perform it in a future volume, to be devoted to a 
general consideration of the Religion of Jesus. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 

In depicting the present condition of things in 
England, Matthew Arnold says that clergymen and 
ministers of religion are full of lamentations over 
what they call the spread of scepticism, and because 
of the little hold which religion now has on the 
masses of the people. And it is the religion of 
the Bible that is professedly in question with all the 
churches when they talk of religion, and lament its 
prospects. With Catholics as well as Protestants, 
and with all the sects of Protestantism, this is so. 
What the religion of the Bible is, and how it is to 
be got at, they may not agree ; but that it is the 
religion of the Bible for which they contend, they 
all aver.^ 

With regard to what the religion of the Bible is, 
Protestants and Catholics not only now disagree : 
they must always continue to disagree. Why.? 
Because, although they proceed upon the common 
postulate, as we have seen, that the Bible contains 
a divinely inspired revelation without the slightest 

79 



80 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

admixture of error, they yet adopt a radically dif- 
ferent standpoint, and pursue a radically different 
method, when they would respectively determine 
how the religion of the Bible, exclusive of the sub- 
ject-matter of the apocryphal books of the Old Tes- 
tament, is to be got at. For when the question is 
specifically raised, how the religion of the Bible is 
to be got at, the Catholics respond — to use the pre- 
cise language of the Vatican Decrees — that, in mat- 
ters of faith and morals appertaining to the building- 
up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the 
true sense of Holy Scripture which our Holy Mother 
Church held and holds, to whom it belongs to judge 
of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy 
Scriptures, and therefore that it is permitted to no 
one to interpret the Sacred Scriptures contrary to 
this sense, nor contrary to the unanimous consent 
of the Fathers. 2 

The Protestants, on the other hand, contend, as 
every one knows, for the right and duty of private 
judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures. 

But in employing their private judgment to deter- 
mine what are the true sense and interpretation of 
the Holy Scriptures, how do Protestants proceed 1 
Their method is simply to compare Scripture with 
Scripture. As Dr. Rainy says : " The whole truth 
on any point which the Scriptures give, they give 
not always in complete single statements, but in 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 8 1 

various statements which explain and guard and 
complete each other. ... I must gather up and 
present to myself the joint effect of these state- 
ments, so far as I have understood them." 3 Or, as 
Dean Mansel puts it : " Scripture is to the theologi- 
cal dogmatist what experience is to the philosophi- 
cal. It supplies him with the facts to which his 
system has to adapt itself. It contains in an unsys- 
tematic form the positive doctrines which further 
inquiry has to exhibit as connected into a scientific 
whole." 4 

Contrasted with the Catholic process of determin- 
ing what the religion of the Bible is, therefore, the 
Protestant process at least guarantees that the reli- 
gion of the Bible will be got at with a comparative 
purity and correctness. For, according to the Prot- 
estant process, the teaching of the Bible on any 
given topic is gradually arrived at by a scientific 
collection and classification of all the detached and 
more or less widely-scattered subject-matter of the 
Bible bearing on the point. Thus, in the hands of 
Protestants, the Bible becomes its own expositor and 
its own interpreter. Thus, in the hands of Protes- 
tants, the religion of the Bible, in all of its various 
aspects, becomes developed from within the Bible 
itself, and will be guarded against the incorporation 
into itself of senses, ideas, and principles from with- 
out, which are foreign to the subject-matter of the 



82 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Bible. But the moment that any external authority, 
such as the Catholic Church, undertakes to deter- 
mine from without what are tiie true sense and 
interpretation of the Bible, that moment a perfect 
flood-gate is thrown open for the inflow of senses, 
ideas, and principles, into the alleged religion of the 
Bible, which do not by any means inhere in the inner 
teachings of the Bible, but which inhere the rather 
in the self-interests, the misconceptions, and even in 
the vices and the superstitions, of the externally 
interpreting body. 

But let it be assumed, for the sake of the argu- 
ment, that, whether by the Catholic process or the 
Protestant process of getting at the thing, or both, 
the religion of the Bible has been more or less accu- 
rately determined. It yet remains true, as Matthew 
Arnold suggests above, that there is a wide-spread 
modern rupture with this very biblical religion. 

This rupture is the most pronounced so far as the 
Old Testament element enters into such religion. 
There can be no question, for example, that multi- 
tudes of modern minds are fairly up in revolt against 
many of the theistic conceptions presented in that 
department of the Scriptures. Thus Professor Christ- 
lieb says that the objection is frequently raised, that, 
side by side with many exalted ideas of God, there 
are in the Bible, at least in the Old Testament, 
many views unworthy of him. 5 Even believers in 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. Z^ 

the Bible, he continues, are sometimes offended by 
the manner in which the God of the Old Testament 
is appealed to in the Psalms as a God of vengeance, 
and also, generally speaking, by the whole spirit 
expressed in those passages in which the poet in- 
vokes destruction on his enemies.^ 

But so far as the theism of the Psalms is specifi- 
cally concerned, we have already, in the chapter on 
Inspiration, cleared the Deity of the Old Testament 
from all reprehensibleness. The authors of the 
imprecatory Psalms habitually invoke Jehovah, in- 
deed, as the most awful God of vengeance. There 
is no reason to suppose, however, that Jehovah either 
inspired those authors, or gave any answer to their 
fearful invocations. 

But, when we come to consider Jehovah as a God 
of War, the manner in which he is to be vindicated 
before the tribunals of the modern judgment and 
conscience is not by any means so palpable. 

One of the most notable attempts at doing this is 
that made by Canon Mozley in his " Ruling Ideas in 
Early Ages." In substance, the Canon proceeds to 
say, that such wars as the exterminating wars of 
Israel, done in obedience to a divine command, are 
strongly urged by unbelievers against Old Testament 
morality, — by which he means, of course, Old Tes- 
tament theism. It is replied that God is the author 
alike of life and death, and that he has the right to 



84 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

deprive any number of his creatures of life, whether 
by the natural instrumentality of pestilence or fam- 
ine, or by the express employment of man as his 
instrument of destruction. As soon, therefore, as a 
divine command to exterminate a whole people be- 
comes known to another people, they not only have 
the right, but are under the strictest obligation, to 
execute such a command. In what way, however, is 
a divine command for the destruction of a whole 
nation made known to the destroying nation t It is 
usually answered, and answered with truth, that it is 
made known to them by the evidence of miracles. 
Still, some distinction is yet wanted in dealing with 
this subject. For, while miraculous evidence consti- 
tuted to the ancient Israelites a sufficient proof of a 
divine command to exterminate certain nations, it 
would not constitute a sufficient proof of any such 
command to us in modern times. Why not t Be- 
cause there is a vast difference between the concep- 
tions of those ages and our own, in consequence of 
which such commands were adapted for proof by 
miracles then, but are not so adapted now. In par- 
ticular, our much more developed ideas of humanity 
and justice would now be an absolute bar to the 
execution of certain proceedings, against which the 
moral sense of the earlier ages of the world did not 
act as such a barrier. That is to say, in these days 
we should be divided in our minds between two con- 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 85 

tradictory evidences, — the evidence of the miracle 
that such a command came from God, and the evi- 
dence of our sense of justice that it could not have 
come from God. But in olden times these com- 
mands had no resistance from the moral sense; they 
did not look unnatural to the ancient Jew ; they were 
not foreign to his standard ; they excited no suspicion, 
and created no perplexity ; they appealed to a genu- 
ine but rough sense of justice, which existed when 
the longing for retribution upon crime in the human 
mind was not checked, as it is now checked, by the 
strict sense of humanity and justice. Such com- 
mands were, therefore, then adapted to miraculous 
proof, but are not so adapted now.7 

But it will be perceived, that in all this Canon 
Mozley merely manages to extricate the ancient 
Jews from our modern execration for the part they 
took in the execution of the alleged commands of 
their Jehovah to slaughter their enemies by the 
wholesale, even to the women and the children. 
Semi-savages that they were, their conceptions alike 
of humanity and justice were so barbarous, in com- 
parison with our own, that they could even conscien- 
tiously almost exterminate nation after nation, at the 
order of their Deity. 

But what are we to think, in these days, of a Deity 
who could deliberately, repeatedly, and persistently 
command such wholesale human slaughters that only 



S6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

a semi-savage people, like the ancient Israelites, 
could possibly carry his commands into execution 
without a moral shock ? 

But of this aspect of the subject, — which, after 
all, is the only vital aspect, — Mozley seems to be 
entirely oblivious. 

Speaking directly to this point, the question is 
raised, whether, as a literal matter of fact, Jehovah 
ever issued any such commands to the ancient Jews. 
They were certainly capable of prosecuting precisely 
such wars without divine or even diabolical direction. 
We are informed, for instance, that, after Joab had 
besieged and captured Rabbah, David brought forth 
the inhabitants thereof, and cut them with saws, and 
with harrows of iron, and with axes, and then pro- 
ceeded to do the same in regard to all the cities of the 
children of Ammon.^ This, however, does not pur- 
port, in the record, to have been done by David in 
pursuance of any divine command, but was mani- 
festly done by him in obedience to his own innate 
propensities to cruelty and barbarism. 

On the other hand, it is not to be forgotten, that, 
according to the Old Testament representation of 
the case, if that representation is to be understood 
literally, either Jehovah had nothing to do with the 
exterminating wars of ancient Israel, or he had sub- 
stantially every thing to do with them. For, funda- 
mentally considered, these wars, according to the 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 8/ 

general letter of the Old Testament history of them, 
were neither originally conceived, nor subsequently 
carried forward, by the Israelites themselves. On 
the contrary, Canaan was selected out beforehand by 
Jehovah for the Israelitish conquest ; and it was he 
who personally took the initiative, and led the He- 
brews forth on their career of death and desolation. 
In fact, the battles themselves were largely fought 
by Jehovah himself, in distinction from the Jews. 
Now he sends the hornet among the foe,9 now he 
hurls down great hailstones from heaven on their 
devoted heads,^° and now he fights against them, 
either with his thunders ^^ or his destroying angels.^^ 

Nor, so far as Jehovah is depicted in the Old Tes- 
tament as personally mingling in these wars, is there 
the slightest use to make the attempt either to dis- 
guise or mitigate their horrors. They were wars to 
the knife, and wars to the death. According to his 
explicit direction, whole cities were to be obliterated ; 
entire tribes, and even entire nations, men, women, 
and children, were to be destroyed. ^3 

What have we to say to this .'' We have to say, 
simply, that because, literally construed, the profess- 
edly historical books of the Old Testament portray 
Jehovah as personally taking this terrific part in the 
Israelitish wars, it by no means follows that he there- 
fore did so. As has already been observed, the 
Israelites were themselves abundantly capable of 



SS THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

butchering their enemies indiscriminately, without 
the slightest instigation or assistance from either 
deity or demon. Besides, the Israelites were by no 
means peculiar among their semi-savage contempora- 
ries in regarding their divinities as being gods of 
war, to whom alike their defeats and their victories 
were to be immediately ascribed. Thus, when the 
Philistine lords had at last succeeded in getting 
Samson in their power and putting out his eyes, they 
gathered themselves together in the temple of their 
Dagon, and offered a great sacrifice, and held a 
mighty jubilation, saying: "Our god hath delivered 
Samson, our enemy, into our hand." ^ In like man- 
ner, those same Philistine lords, after the slaughter 
of Saul and his three sons, and the general decima- 
tion of the Israelitish army, published the victory far 
and near throughout the houses of their idols, and 
deposited the armor of Saul in the house of Ashta- 
roth.15 So also when Sennacherib, king of Assyria, 
came up, and invaded Judah, he treated with perfect 
contempt the assurance which Hezekiah had given 
to the Jews that the Lord their God would help fight 
their battles, and made it his public vaunt and taunt 
that thus far the gods of no nation whatever had 
been able successfully to resist either his own mili- 
tary prowess, or that of his fathers before him.'^ 
And under these circumstances it was precisely as 
much a matter of course that the ancient Israelites 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 89 

should refer their various fortunes in the field directly 
to their Jehovah, as it was that the Philistines, for 
example, should refer their various fortunes in the 
field directly to their Ashtaroth or Dagon. 

But the Old Testament annals speak in such a 
matter-of-fact manner about the personal part osten- 
sibly taken by Jehovah in the old Jewish battles, that 
they are well calculated to deceive us, unless we pene- 
trate beneath the surface, and catch their real mean- 
ing. For, upon reading these annals, the first im- 
pression produced upon the mind is to the general 
effect that Jehovah himself was seldom absent from 
among the Israelitish hosts, as a sort of visible com- 
mander-in-chief, directing all their military move- 
ments ; and that when he was not thus personally, 
and almost visibly, present in the field, he was yet 
always near at hand in a kind of theocratic pavilion, 
ready upon the instant to be inquired of through 
his aides-de-camp or prophets, and through them to 
issue his orders of the day. But, manifestly, all 
this is merely ancient Orientalism ; is merely ancient 
anthropomorphism ; is merely of a piece, for example, 
with such other biblical statements as that in the 
Book of Genesis, which represents the Lord God as 
walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the 
day, and talking face to face with Adam and his 
wife. ^7 And, if in these days we were called upon 
to narrate events corresponding to those related in 



90 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

the Old Testament military journals, we would do 
so with little of this ancient Orientalism, and with 
still less of this ancient anthropomorphism. Sup- 
pose, for instance, that our subject were the career 
of Cromwell. We would then write — to give two 
or three illustrations — substantially as follows : The 
first military exploit of Cromwell was to occupy the 
city of Cambridge, and to seize upon the university 
plate, in the name of God, to defray the expenses of 
the war.^^ Or thus : After the capture of Bristol, 
Cromwell wrote to the Parliament, saying, ** This is 
none other than the hand of God, and to him be 
the glory." ^9 Or thus : When Cromwell had been 
almost compelled to surrender his forces at Dunbar, 
upon seeing the Scotch advancing, instead of pru- 
dently delaying the battle, his exclamation was, '* The 
Lord hath delivered them into our hands." ^o Qr 
yet again : After Cromwell had taken Drogheda by 
storm, he issued orders that nothing should be spared, 
and then piously added, "This bitterness will save 
much effusion of blood by the goodness of God." ^i 
That is to say, being sufficiently divested of their 
ancient Orientalism and their ancient anthropo- 
morphism to be correctly understood in modern 
times, the Old Testament military annals would 
then merely affirm that Jehovah was personally 
engaged in, and personally responsible for, the old 
exterminating wars of Israel, only in the same sense 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 9 1 

that we would now assert that Providence was per- 
sonally engaged in, and personally responsible for, 
the general military course of Cromwell. 

But how about the miracles which Mozley assumes 
were wrought in attestation to the ancient Jews that 
their warfare upon the surrounding nations was waged 
in obedience to the most literal and the most explicit 
injunctions of their presiding Deity ? Two of the 
most notable of these alleged miracles are recorded 
in the Book of Joshua. The first is to the effect 
that the walls of Jericho were demolished without 
the employment of any other human agency than 
the blowing of seven trumpets made from rams' 
horns.22 The second consisted in the suspension 
of the apparent revolutions of both the sun and the 
moon, in order that the Israelites might have the 
opportunity to wreak their vengeance on their ene- 
mies. ^3 But this latter so-called miracle is a manifest 
myth, which the author of Joshua, or at least that 
portion of Joshua, says he copied from the Book of 
Jasher.24 And, if the 'former of these so-called mir- 
acles is not likewise a manifest myth, then we would 
thank the mediaeval biblicists to instance one which 
they consider such in the whole rang'e of ancient 
religious literature. In saying which we do not 
mean to affirm that all of the miracles recorded in 
the Bible are not historical. Far otherwise. We 
merely mean to assert that some of the miracles 



92 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

recorded in the Bible are not historical, and to 
insist that the two specified above are — and that 
upon the very face of them — abundant proofs of 
this assertion. 

We have thus far been considering some of those 
objections to Old Testament theism which are most 
frequently discussed. But we have discovered that 
these particular objections are directed rather against 
modern misconceptions of Old Testament theism than 
against Old Testament theism itself. One of the most 
prolific sources of these misconceptions is the mediae- 
val theological custom of foisting upon the Old Testa- 
ment Deity the personal inspiration of the more re- 
pulsive subject-matter of the ancient Jewish Scrip- 
tures — such as that of the imprecatory Psalms — 
which subject-matter does not, however, originally 
purport to be, in any sense, inspired by this Divin- 
ity. Another, and an almost equally prolific, source 
of these misconceptions is the mediaeval theological 
habit of construing with the most absolute literal- 
ness the ancient Orientalism and the ancient anthro- 
pomorphism of the Old Testament methods of ex- 
pression, — an illustration of which has been given 
in connection with the Israelitish wars. 

But even if the Old Testament theism, or, in a 
more comprehensive sense, ev^en if the entire Old 
Testament religions system, should be laboriously 
cleared from all these modern misconceptions, it 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 93 

Still would remain to affirm that this religious 
system would be almost inexpressibly repulsive to 
the modern religious sense, and that it would in no 
degree respond to the modern religious development 
and need. Assuming, for instance, that the highest 
external and national expression of this religion was 
to be met with in connection with the ancient Hebrew 
temple-worship, when that temple-worship was at its 
best and purest ; yet any truly religious soul could, 
in these days, almost as soon conceive of himself as 
resorting to an ordinary slaughter-house, as resorting 
to such an institution as the Jewish temple, whether 
to worship God or to hold religious fellowship with 
his common brotherhood of man. 

Not that we are to be here understood as speak- 
ing in terms of unqualified reprobation of the ancient 
religious observances of Israel. Far otherwise. 
Those observances, even in their aspects of butchery 
and barbarism, were pre-eminently adapted to the 
ethical and the religious condition of the Israelites 
themselves. And, when contrasted with the reli- 
gious observances then in vogue among the surround- 
ing pagan nations, those of Israel must at once take 
rank among the greatest religious advances ever 
made in general human history. To illustrate. One 
of the commonest forms of religious observance pre- 
vailing among those surrounding pagan nations con- 
sisted in the worship of Baal joined with that of 



94 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 

Ashtoreth. But Baal, the sun-god, was regarded by 
his devotees as being the male principle of life and 
reproduction in nature, whereas Ashtoreth repre- 
sented to them their conceptions of the female prin- 
ciple. And the religious worship of these divinities 
combined was, moreover, of the most revolting char- 
acter. It was attended, for example, not merely 
with the wildest and most frantic dances, not merely 
with the laceration and the disfigurement of the 
persons of the worshippers with such instruments 
as knives, but likewise with the occasional offering 
of human sacrifices, and with the habitual enactment 
of the grossest and the most shameless scenes of 
sensuality, licentiousness, and even systematic pros- 
titution. For as there were professional religious 
prostitutes connected with the Egyptian temple con- 
secrated to Isis, and with the Grecian temple at 
Corinth dedicated to Aphrodite, in a like manner 
the daughters of Moab and Baal-peor were profes- 
sional religious prostitutes connected with the grove 
and temple worship, or rather revels, of the ancient 
Canaanitish tribes. 

Crude and coarse, bloody and revolting, therefore, 
as the religious rites and ceremonies of the ancient 
Hebrews doubtless were, when regarded from the 
modern religious standpoint, this single illustration 
suffices to show that they were, nevertheless, an 
almost immeasurable advance upon the surrounding 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 95 

heathenish rites and ceremonies, from which they 
had begun in a most pronounced degree to separate 
themselves, and to separate themselves in the direc- 
tion of a far greater social and sexual purity, and a 
far higher order of ethical and theistical conception. 
Here, in fact, we have the far-off and germinal begin- 
nings of that special line of religious development 
and progress which has eventually resulted in the 
highest and purest forms of religious thought and 
service known among ourselves to-day. 

But that which was, in the olden ages of the world, 
a much better form of religion than had been devel- 
oped among the completely heathenish Canaanites, 
and which was also a very good form, if not the very 
best possible form, of religion for the semi-heathen- 
ish Israelites, is scarcely a form of religion to be 
either perpetuated or defended at so late a period as 
this. And while the Protestant and the Catholic 
churches do not go to the extreme length of keep- 
ing up the old Israelitish scenes of bloody sacrifice 
and slaughter in the courts of their respective places 
of worship, they yet do make the combined effort 
both to perpetuate and to defend the old Israelitish 
religion in many of its fundamental aspects, and that 
even in this nineteenth century. For is it not their 
common boast that their religion is the religion of 
the entire Holy Scriptures ? In particular is it not 
at once the watchword and the war-cry of all the 



96 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Protestant denominations, that their religion is the 
religion of the Bible, of the whole Bible, and of noth- 
ing but the Bible ? But the religion of the whole 
Bible contains in itself the religion of the Old Tes- 
tament as well as that of the New. Hence it results 
that in all Protestant and in all Catholic statements 
of religious belief, Old Testament theism, Old Tes- 
tament ethics, Old Testament religion, forms one 
of the most conspicuous features. But unless the 
world is to reverse its present forward mental and 
moral movements, and is to go back to* the old 
Israelitish general conditions of semi-barbarism, the 
Old Testament element must either be very largely 
expurgated alike from Catholicism and from Protes- 
tantism, or else both Protestantism and Catholicism 
must hereafter increasingly cease to furnish a satis- 
factory form of religious belief and practice through- 
out the modern world of development and culture. 

But, Catholicism and Protestantism quite aside, 
in what way and to what degree must the Old Tes- 
tament element be eliminated from the general reli- 
gion of the Bible, in order to bring up the general 
religion of the Bible to the requirements of the mod- 
ern religious need } To this we would reply, that 
this work of elimination was specifically attempted 
upwards of eighteen centuries ago, and attempted 
by one whose entire competency to undertake the 
task no Catholic and no Protestant will question. 



THE RELIGION OE THE BIBLE. 97 

We scarcely need to add that we. here refer to 
Jesus. 

When we come specifically to treat of the religion 
of Jesus, in our projected volume on that subject to 
which we have already adverted, it will come legiti- 
mately before us to point out in detail how radically 
revolutionary the religious undertaking of Jesus was 
in nearly all of its relations to the old Israelitish 
system. But even here enough must be said to 
justify the general observation that Jesus doubtless 
was a most pronounced revolutionist, when he is 
regarded from the ancient Jewish standpoint. 

And, to begin with, it is a very significant circum- 
stance, that the personal religious life of Jesus was 
led and held almost entirely aloof from the temple 
at Jerusalem. In fact, according to the synoptical 
Gospels, after he had been once taken up by his 
parents to the holy city at the age of twelve, he 
never repaired thither again but a single time dur- 
ing his life, and that time was just before his death. 
And while there on this single occasion he took no 
part whatever in the temple rites and ceremonies, 
aside from partaking of the Paschal feast. He went 
frequently into the temple, indeed ; but he went there 
to teach, to cast out the money-changers, and the 
like, but not to offer sacrifice, and not to perform, 
with the one exception instanced, any other ritual 
observance usually performed by the orthodox and 
pious Jew. 



98 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Separating himself thus almost absolutely from the 
temple at Jerusalem, Jesus went about from place to 
place, and chiefly among his fellow countrymen, gath- 
ering about himself his own disciples and adherents, 
and seeking to form those disciples and adherents 
into a distinctive religious body. This distinctive 
religious body he sometimes called the church, but 
much more habitually proclaimed to be the king- 
dom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. And, so far 
from being a mere reformed reduplication of the 
ancient Jewish theocracy, this kingdom of God, this 
kingdom of heaven, which Jesus proclaimed, was 
something so entirely new in his conceptions of it 
that he said to his contemporaries, in one breath, 
that the kingdom of God should be taken from them, 
and, in the next breath, that the kingdom of God had 
come unto them. 

But wherein did this new kingdom of God, pro- 
claimed and founded by Jesus, essentially differ from 
the ancient Jewish theocracy ? It differed from the 
ancient Jewish theocracy in very many respects, two 
or three of which we now proceed to notice. And, 
in the first place, the Old Testament Scriptures 
constituted the great law-book — in fact, the only 
supreme law-book — of this theocracy. On the other 
hand, the personal commands of Jesus were to con- 
stitute the sole standard of appeal, the only law of 
the ethical and religious life, in his new divine society. 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 99 

But what were the personal commands of Jesus, if 
they were not substantial repetitions and re-affirma- 
tions of the Old Testament Scriptures ? To this we 
can best reply by first citing these remarks by 
Renan : " The Puritan reformer is particularly bibli- 
cal, — starting from the immutable text to criticise 
the current theology which has been progressing from 
generation to generation. Jesus laid the axe at the 
root of the tree far more energetically. We see him 
sometimes, it is true, invoke the text against the 
traditions of the Pharisees. But in general he makes 
little of exesresis. At the same blow he hews down 
text and cornmentaries. He shows clearly to the 
Pharisees that with their traditions they are seriously 
innovating upon the religion of Moses, but he by no 
means claims himself to return to Moses. His aim 
is forward, not backward. Jesus was more than the 
reformer of a superannuated religion : he was the 
creator of the eternal religion of humanity." ^5 

Now, that Renan does not here employ too em- 
phatic language in depicting the hostile attitude 
assumed by Jesus toward the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, is patent on the surface. It is useless for the 
mediaeval biblicists to affirm that this hostile attitude 
was assumed only against the rabbinical additions to 
and corruptions of the Old Testament, but not against 
the Old Testament itself. To illustrate. In the sin- 
gle observation ; *' Render therefore unto Caesar the 



100 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things 
that are God's," Jesus abolished for his followers all 
those precepts and provisions of the Old Testament 
which had converted the old Jewish theocracy into a 
political organization as well as a religious. Again : 
Jesus provided for only two exceedingly simple ritual 
observances in his new divine society, — that of bap- 
tism upon entrance into the society, and that of the 
eucharistic feast to be observed within the society 
itself. And in this summary manner did Jesus at 
once and forever abrograte for his disciples almost 
the last traces of the ceremonial and ritualistic ele- 
ment in the Old Testament Scriptures. But Jesus 
went much farther, and struck much more deeply at 
the very fundamentals of Judaism, than even this. 
It is indeed true that he publicly declared that he 
did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, 
but to fulfil them, — that is, to bring them to perfec- 
tion. But the manner in which he proceeded to ful- 
fil them was that of the religious revolutionist, not 
that of the conservative religious reformer. For to 
him the entire sum and substance of both the law 
and the prophets were nothing more than this ; 
namely, that his disciples should love the Lord their 
God supremely, and likewise love their neighbors as 
themselves. And this remark suggests that Jesus 
was almost perpetually drawing a broad line of dis- 
tinction between what had been said by them of old 



THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 10 1 

time, and what he had to say himself, even upon the 
ethical side of the Old Testament injunctions and 
prohibitions, as with' reference to what constitutes 
murder, adultery, and the like. Nor were the very 
theistical conceptions of Jesus the theistical concep- 
tions of the Old Testament Scriptures. Take, for 
example, just here, a salient feature or two of con- 
trast between the theism of the Decalogue and the 
theism of the Sermon on the Mount. In the one 
case we have a mere tribal divinity bringing up a 
special people out of Egypt ; in the other case we 
have an universal heavenly Father, who regards all 
the nations of the world, without distinction or ex- 
ception, as his beloved children. In the one case 
we have a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the 
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
generation ; in the other case we have a benignant 
parent who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
the good, and who sendeth his rain on the just and 
the unjust. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELIGION. 

It is well known, that, in his final volume on 
"The Old Faith and the New," Strauss, as the arch- 
representative of the modern religious revolutionists, 
discussed these two leading questions : I. Are we 
still Christians .'' 11. Have we still a religion } 

The first of these questions Strauss answered with- 
out hesitation in the negative. But the general tenor 
of his conclusions in response to the second question 
is thus epitomized by himself in a single sentence : 
"We demand the same piety for our Cosmos that 
the devout of old demanded for his God." ' Well, 
therefore, may M. Renan observe that when a Ger- 
man boasts of his impiety he must never be taken 
at his word. Germany is not capable of being 
irreligious. When it would be atheistic, it is so 
devotedly and with a sort of unction, ^ 

But is not M. Renan himself one of the most con- 
spicuous, not to say one of the most notorious, of 
the modern irreligious leaders ? Such he is indeed 
thought to be by a great many very pious people. 



RELIGION. 103 

Yet, if he be permitted to speak for himself, he 
becomes one of the most outspoken advocates of 
religion now before the public. Thus Renan says : 
" The sad but inevitable quarrel over the history of a 
religion, between the sectaries of the religion and 
the friends of impartial science, should not then 
bring on science the accusation of anti-religious prop- 
agandism." 3 "I am not unmindful of the misunder- 
standings to which he exposes himself who touches 
on matters that are objects of credence to a large 
number of men. But all fine exercise of thought 
would be forbidden, were we obliged to anticipate 
every possible perversion that prejudiced minds may 
fall into when reading what they do not understand. 
.". . By their leave one is pantheist or atheist with- 
out knowing it. They create schools on their own 
authority, and often one learns from them, with some 
surprise, that he is the disciple of masters he never 
knew." 4 ** Far from seeking to weaken the religious 
sentiment, I would gladly contribute something to 
raise and purify it." 5 ''All the symbols which serve 
to give shape to the religious sentiment are imper- 
fect, and their fate is to be one after another rejected. 
But nothing is more remote from the truth than the 
dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected 
humanity without religion."^ "Devotion is as natu- 
ral as egoism to a true born man. The organization 
of devotion is religion. Let no one hope, therefore, 



I04 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

to dispense with religion or religious associations. 
Each progression of modern society will render this 
want more imperious." 7 ''Religion is a thing sui 
generis : the philosophy of the schools will never take 
its place." ^ " It may be that all we love, all that in 
our eyes makes life beautiful, the liberal culture of 
the mind, science and exalted art, are destined to last 
but a generation; but religion, — that will never 
die." 9 

Among other recognized leaders of modern thought, 
John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Professor 
Tyndall have been frequently represented, both in 
the orthodox pulpit and in the general religious 
press, as being little better than the sworn enemies 
of religion. But John Stuart Mill expressly main- 
tains that the influences of religion which will remain 
after rational criticism has done its utmost against 
.the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving. 
Besides, he specifically mentions, as among the other 
inducements for cultivating a religious devotion to 
the welfare of our fellow-creatures, these two cardi- 
nal considerations : first, that we shall thereby im- 
pose a limit to every selfish aim ; and, secondly, that 
we shall thereby be acting in accordance with the 
feeling that we may be co-operating with the unseen 
Being to whom we owe all that is enjoyable in life.^° 
Moreover, Herbert Spencer says that we must re- 
member, that, amid its many errors and corruptions. 



RELIGION. 105 

religion has always asserted and diffused a verity. 
The truly religious element of religion has always 
been good : that which has been proved untenable in 
doctrine and vicious in practice has been its irre- 
ligious element, and from this it has been ever 
undergoing purification.'^ Generally speaking, the 
religion current in each age and among each people 
has been as near an approximation to the truth as it 
was then and there possible for men to receive. 
Few, if any, are as yet fitted to dispense with such 
conceptions as are current. The substituted creed 
can become operative only when it becomes, like the 
present one, an element in early education, and has 
the support of a strong social sanction. We must, 
therefore, recognize the resistance to a change of 
theological opinions as in a great measure salutary. '^ 
Nor is Professor Tyndall, any more than either 
John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer, justly charged 
with being arrayed in open hostility to religion. 
On the other hand, he repels this charge in the very 
strongest language. He says, for example : " The 
facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the 
facts of physics. But the world, I hold, will have to 
distinguish between the feeling and its forms, and 
to vary the latter in accordance with the intellectual 
condition of the age." '3 ''The world will have re- 
ligion of some kind." M "You who have escaped 
from these religions into the high and dry light of 



I06 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

intellect may deride them ; but in doing so you 
deride accidents of form merely, and fail to touch 
the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in 
the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reason- 
able satisfaction is the problem of problems at the 
present hour." ^5 

But the traditional divines may here interpose that 
the Apostle Paul speaks of a certain class of persons 
who are v^ithout God in the world, and may demand 
to know whether Renan, Tyndall, and the like, are 
not at least without God in their religion. 

That these men are freely accredited with the most 
downright atheism by their orthodox opponents, no 
one will of course think to question. But we have 
already heard Renan, for one, in a general way dis- 
claim that he is either a pantheist or an atheist. 
Elsewhere he more explicitly observes : ** If your fac- 
ulties, vibrating in unison, have never rendered that 
grand, peculiar tone which we call God, I have noth- 
ing more to say. You are wanting in the essential 
and characteristic element of our nature. Granting 
even that for us philosophers another word might be 
preferable, there would be an immense disadvantage 
in separating ourselves by our speech from the sim- 
ple, who adore so well in their way. Tell the simple 
to live a life of aspiration after truth, beauty, moral 
goodness, the words will convey no meaning to them. 
Tell them to love God, not to offend God, they will 



RELIGION. 107 

understand you wonderfully. God, Providence, Im- 
mortality, — good old words, a little clumsy perhaps, 
which philosophy will interpret in finer and finer 
senses, but which it will never fill the place of to 
advantage. Under one form or another, God will 
always be the sum of our supersensual needs, the 
form under which we conceive the ideal. In other 
words, man, placed in the presence of the beautiful, 
the good, the true, goes out of himself, and, being 
caught up by a celestial charm, annihilates his petty 
personality, and becomes exalted and absorbed. 
What is that, if it be not adoration } " '^ 

As John Stuart Mill mentions above, the convic- 
tion that one is co-operating with the unseen Being 
as being one of the strongest incentives to leading a 
truly religious life, there is no occasion to adduce 
any further evidence that he likewise is a theist, as 
distinguished from an atheist. 

As for Herbert Spencer, we are free to confess 
that we do not just now remember to have met with 
the specific name of God, used in his own behalf, 
anywhere in his published writings. But Herbert 
Spencer is a philosopher, and does not seem to agree 
with Renan about the desirableness of not separat- 
ing himself in speech from simple-minded people. 
Still Herbert Spencer is no more an atheist than is 
Dean Stanley or Canon Mozley, for example. Only, 
in all connections where either Stanley or Mozley 



I08 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

would employ the good old-fashioned name of God, 
Spencer prefers to speak of the Unknown Cause, 
the Inscrutable Power, or something of the sort.^7 

Professor Tyndall has been, over and over again, 
compelled by his clerical opponents to define his 
position on this point. Among other things, he 
says : " In connection with the charge of atheism, I 
would make one remark. Christian men are proved 
by their writings to have their hours of weakness 
and of doubt, as well as their hours of strength and 
of conviction ; and men like myself share, in their 
own way, these variations of mood and tense. Were 
the religious moods of many of my assailants the 
only alternative ones, I do not know how strong the 
claims of the doctrine of * Material Atheism ' upon 
my allegiance might be. Probably they would be 
very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed, during 
years of self-observation, that it is not in hours of 
clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends 
itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger 
and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears 
as offering no solution of the mystery in which we 
dwell, and of which we form a part." ^^ '* Often, in 
the spring-time, when looking with delight on the 
sprouting foliage, 'considering the lilies of the field,' 
and sharing the general joy of opening life, I have 
asked myself whether there is no power, being, or 
thing, in the universe, whose knowledge of that of 



RELIGION. 109 

which I am so ignorant is greater than mine. I 
have' said to myself: Can man's knowledge be the 
greatest knowledge, and man's life the highest life ? 
My friends, the profession of that atheism with which 
I am sometimes so lightly charged would, in my 
case, be an impossible answer to this question, — only 
slightly preferable to that fierce and distorted theism 
which still reigns rampant in some minds, as the 
survival of a more ferocious age." ^9 ''But, quitting 
the more grotesque forms of the theological, I already 
see, or think I see, emerging from recent discussions 
that wonderful plasticity of the Theistic Idea which 
enables it to maintain, through many changes, its 
hold upon superior minds." 2° 

Thus, at no slight risk, perhaps, of proving some- 
what prolix, if not positively tedious, we have en- 
deavored to demonstrate that, — despite all the 
counter outcries of the orthodox divines, — in a 
broad and general way of speaking, we have all 
along been perfectly correct in characterizing the 
present as being a religious, as distinguished from 
an irreligious, crisis. Not that we would be under- 
stood as going so far as to affirm that there are abso- 
lutely no modern thinkers who have succeeded both 
in securing a certain limited degree of public recog- 
nition,- and likewise broken with religion in every 
sense and form. We would merely claim to have 
shown, by the instances adduced above, that all, or 



no THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

nearly all, of our really great modern thinkers, who 
may be fairly said to give at once an impulse and a 
direction to the general pubHc thought, and who may 
be fairly said also to represent the extremest phases 
of what is popularly known as modern unbelief, — 
that these latter thinkers have, almost without dis- 
tinction or exception, failed to take the final step of 
parting with all religious faith. They do not, indeed, 
all of them, still believe in a religion in any tra- 
ditional sense or form ; and yet, in some sense and 
in some form, they do believe in a religion still. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE RELIGION OF JESUS. 

According to the conclusion arrived at in the 
preceding chapter, the modern religious world, as 
distinguished from the Protestant and Catholic re- 
ligious world, may now be said to be divided into 
two leading classes, — those who still believe in a 
religion in some traditional sense and form, and 
those who still believe in a religion, but in no tra- 
ditional sense and form. 

The object which we next propose to ourselves is 
to discover the ultimate line of division which 
separates these classes the one from the other. 

That this ultimate line of division cannot be any 
dogmatic system of theology, whether Protestant or 
Catholic, it would be ahnost absurd to do any thing- 
more than merely to suggest, at the present stage of 
this discussion. That it can no more be the general 
religion of the Bible, is equally apparent to every 
thoughtful reader of the foregoing pages. What, 
then, is it } To this we answer that it is the religion 
of Jesus. For, as Professor Tischendorf remarks. 



112 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

the life of Jesus has become, in Christian science, 
the great question of the day.^ Or, as Strauss him- 
self expresses it, it may surprise us that the debate 
as to the truth of Christianity has at last narrowed 
itself into one as to the personality of its founder; 
that the decisive battle of Christian theology should 
take place on the field of Christ's life.^ Accordingly, 
Professor Christlieb demands to know : What think 
ye of Christ ? Whose Son is he ? And then pro- 
ceeds to say that this is not a question, but the 
question, which, of all other questions, most deeply 
agitates the world to-day. 3 

But we must first of all protest against making the 
mere question of the personality of Jesus the one 
crucial, all-decisive question of modern religious 
thought. For by the personality of Jesus all parties 
to the debate mean specifically and professedly the 
proper divinity of Jesus. And the reason why we 
object to making the decision of this one subject 
substantially the decision of all other subjects now 
at issue in the general domain of religious investiga- 
tion, will be apparent at a glance after we have 
attended to the following remarks by Strauss. He 
says : " It is indeed of importance to assure ourselves 
that Moses and Mohammed were no impostors ; but 
in other respects the religions established by them 
must be judged according to their own deserts, irre- 
spectively of the greater or less accuracy of our ac- 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II3 

quaintance with their founders' Hves. The reason is 
obvious. They are only the founders, not at the 
same time the objects, of the rehgion they instituted. 
While withdrawing the veil from the new revelation, 
they themselves modestly stand aside. They are 
indeed objects of reverence, but not of adoration. 
This is notoriously otherwise with Christianity. Here 
the founder is. at the same the most prominent object 
of worship, and the system based upon him loses its 
support as soon as he is shown to be lacking in the 
qualities appropriate to an object of religious wor- 
ship. This, in fact, has long ago been apparent ; for 
an -object of religious adoration must be a divinity, 
and thinking men have long since ceased to regard 
the founder of Christianity as such. But it is said 
now that he himself never aspired to this, that his 
deification has only been a later importation into the 
church, and that, if we seriously look upon him as a 
man, we shall occupy the standpoint which was also 
his own. But, even admitting this to be the case, 
nevertheless the whole re2:ulation of our churches, 
Protestant as well as Catholic, is accommodated to 
the former hypothesis ; this Christian cultus, this 
garment cut out to fit an incarnate God, looks slov- 
enly and shapeless when but a mere man is invested 
with its ample folds." 4 

In other words, if the standpoint be assumed, 
that, as Renan observes, Jesus never for a moment 



1 14 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

enounces the sacrilegious idea that he is God,5 then 
both Protestantism and Catholicism do indeed be- 
come shaken at their very foundations. But in the 
mean while what has happened to the religion of 
Jesus ? Nothing more serious than that Jesus has 
been simply restored to that position of a mere man 
in his own religious system, which no one more ear- 
nestly than Strauss contends is precisely the position 
that he personally conceived himself alone to occupy. 

This is not, however, to pronounce any judgment 
for the present, either the one way or the other, on 
the general merits of the modern debate concerning 
Jesus' personality. It is merely to point out the only 
legitimate results of denying or even disproving his 
divinity on the ground that he personally professed 
to be nothing but a man. 

But some one may here demand to know more 
specifically what is meant in these days when per- 
sons speak of the religion of Jesus. 

In the chapter on the Religion of the Bible we 
discovered, for one thing, that the religion of Jesus, 
differs in almost every essential respect from the 
religion of the Old Testament, on the one hand ; and 
the question now arises, how it stands related to the 
general religion of the New Testament, on the other. 

It has already been seen that the religion of Jesus, 
as it is set forth in the fourth Gospel, is maintained 
by a very large number of modern biblicists to be so 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II5 

incompatible with that religion, as it is set forth in 
the other three Gospels, that, if the synoptical repre- 
sentation thereof be accepted as historical, then the 
Johannean representation must be rejected as on the 
whole not historical. We now advance to say that 
the Rev, Mr. Bernard, in his capacity of Bampton 
Lecturer, feels himself under obligation to combat 
the strong disposition which is evinced by many of 
the most eminent of modern writers and preachers 
to make a broad distinction between the religious 
teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, and the religious 
teaching of the apostles, as such teaching finds ex- 
pression in the Book of the Acts, in the Epistles, 
and in the Book of Revelation. ^ Not that there is 
any thing particularly modern in this. On the con- 
trary, Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur cites Neander 
as his authority for affirming that even in the primi- 
tive days of the Church there existed a party of 
Christ, just as there existed another party of Paul, 
and still another party of Apollos. And Baur then 
goes on to reason that this party of Christ must have 
adhered to the teaching of Jesus alone, to the entire 
rejection of the teaching of the apostles. 7 And, 
coming down to later times, Adam Storey Farrar 
says that Bolingbroke, following the example of 
Chubb, insisted that there exists a broad distinction 
between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Paul.^ 
And, according to Dean Mansel, Locke likewise 



Il6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

maintained that the teaching of the Epistles is sepa- 
rated from that of the Gospels, and that it is not to 
the Epistles but to the Gospels that we must go if 
we would learn the fundamentals of the faith, 9 — by 
which he means, of course, the fundamentals of the 
religion of Jesus. And, still later yet, we find John 
Stuart Mill in a general way placing the precepts of 
Jesus far above the Paulism which is the foundation 
of ordinary Christianity, and specifically making the 
Apostle Paul responsible for atonement and redemp- 
tion, original sin and vicarious punishment, but en- 
tirely exonerating Jesus from ever having taught any 
such repellent doctrines. ^° 

Now, whether the religion of Jesus, particularly as 
it is developed in the synoptical Gospels, is or is 
not thus at a fundamental variance with the religious 
system developed in the remaining portions of the 
New Testament, is a subject which we shall hereafter 
discuss in our formal volume on the Religion of 
Jesus. Just here, however, it suffices to say that to 
raise and discuss the question whether it is, or is not, 
thus at variance, is by no means to inaugurate an 
attack on the religion of Jesus. • It is merely to make 
the effort to discover what the religion of Jesus is, on 
the one hand, as distinguished from what the religion 
of the remaining portions of the New Testament is, 
on the other. But manifestly to m.ake the effort to dis- 
cover what the religion of Jesus actually is, amounts 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS. WJ 

to a vastly different thing, both in its animus and 
intention, from making a formal assault on that reli- 
gion after it is discovered. And, to bring out the 
one practical point which it is now our sole object to 
impress upon the reader, we will argumentatively 
assume for the time being, that, as the result of 
investigation, it has been satisfactorily established, 
first, that the data of the religion of Jesus are to be 
found almost exclusively in the synoptical Gospels ; 
and, secondly, that the data furnished by the fourth 
Gospel, the Book of the Acts, the several New Tes- 
tament Epistles, and the Book of Revelation, would 
give us a religious system of quite another realm and 
order, when compared with that of Jesus. 

Assuming this standpoint, it is, first of all, to be 
distinctly recognized that the most progressive reli- 
gious thinkers of the present epoch do not profess to 
have broken with the religion of Jesus altogether. 
Take one or two examples. And, to begin with, 
John Stuart Mill remarks: "Whatever else maybe 
taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is 
still left, — an unique figure, not more unlike all his 
precursors than all his followers, even those who had 
the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of 
no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gos- 
pels, is not historical, and that we know not how 
much of what is admirable has been superadded by 
the tradition of his followers. The tradition of fol- 



Il8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

lowers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and 
may have inserted all the miracles which he is reput- 
ed to have wrought. But who among his disciples, 
or among their proselytes, was capable of invent- 
ing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagin- 
ing the life and character revealed in the Gospels ? 
Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as certainly 
not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies 
were of a totally different sort. . . . What could be 
added and interpolated by a disciple, we may see in' 
the mystical parts of the Gospel of St. John. . . , 
The East was full of men who could have stolen any 
quantity of this poor stuff, as the multitudinous 
Oriental sects of Gnostics afterwards did. But about 
the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of 
personal originality, combined with a profundity of 
insight, which must place the Prophet of Naza- 
reth, even in the estimation of those who have no 
belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the 
men of sublime genius of whom our species can 
boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined 
with the qualities of probably the greatest moral 
reformer and martyr to that mission who ever ex- 
isted upon earth, religion cannot be said to have 
made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the 
ideal representative and guide of humanity ; nor 
even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, 
to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II9 

the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so 
to live that Christ would approve our life." ^^ 

In like manner Renan says : " Having reached a 
higher plane than man ever reached before, Jesus 
founded the eternal religion of humanity." ^^ « j^- 
will never be possible to surpass him in the matter 
of religion, whatever progress may be made in other 
branches of intellectual culture. Religious faith has 
doubtless perfected itself since his time by becoming 
disengaged from many a superstition, and from belief 
in the supernatural. But this progress bears no com- 
parison with the gigantic stride that Jesus caused 
humanity to take in the career of its religious 
development." ^3 ''The religion of Jesus is in some 
respects the final religion. Whatever may be the 
transformation of dogma, Jesus will remain in reli- 
gion the creator of its pure sentiment. The Sermon 
on the Mount will never be surpassed. No revolu- 
tion will lead us not to join in religion the grand 
intellectual and moral line at the head of which 
beams the name of Jesus. In this sense we are still 
Christians, even though we separate upon almost all 
points from the Christian tradition which has pre- 
ceded us." ^4 

Having thus shown that the most radical religious 
revolutionists of the day do not propose to come to 
a total rupture with the religion of Jesus, it still 
remains to say that they nevertheless do propose 



I20 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

to come to a rupture with that religion in more 
respects than one. Thus, on the one hand, Strauss 
is prepared to admit that every point is fully devel- 
oped in the religion of Jesus which has reference to 
love towards God and man, and also to purity of 
heart and of life. At the same time Strauss insists 
that it is a perfectly fruitless undertaking to attempt 
to decide, upon the precepts and after the example 
of Jesus, what the action of a man ought to be as a 
citizen, and what his conduct should be in connec- 
tion with the enrichment and embellishment of exist- 
ence by trade and art. On these latter points, 
Strauss contends that something is intrinsically 
wanting in the original religious scheme of Jesus, 
which needs to be supplied from the circumstances 
of other times, and other states, and other systems of 
cultivation. ^5 

It is, however, on the side of its supernaturalism 
that the most advanced wing of modern religious 
revolutionists has come to the most absolute breach 
with the religion of Jesus. It may, indeed, be 
denied by them that Jesus personally professed to 
be either a God, or in any other sense a superhuman 
being. It may also be denied by them that Jesus 
personally professed to perform any such wonderful 
works, or miracles, as are accredited to him even in 
the synoptical Gospels. But it cannot be denied 
by them that the Jesus of the synoptical Gospels 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS. 121 

was a most pronounced believer in the supernatural. 
This Jesus believed in miracles. This Jesus believed 
in the efficacy of prayer. This Jesus believed in 
special providences. This Jesus believed in special 
and direct divine revelations. And this belief of 
Jesus in the supernatural, the miraculous, is inte- 
gral, inwrought, vital to his religious system. But 
here the religious revolutionists more immediately 
in question propose to put the religion of Jesus into 
precisely the same category with all other tradi- 
tional forms of religious faith which postulate the 
supernatural, and part company with it, not partially, 
but completely. In the ultimate analysis, the reli- 
gion of Jesus is in their estimation the highest, and 
incomparably the highest, form of religion which we 
have inherited from the past, and the one which of 
all others is in many respects destined, they grant, 
to have the grandest career in the future. It is 
moreover, of all other inherited forms of religion, 
the one for which they have the profoundest respect, 
and which they can, at least on its ethical side, in the 
largest measure adopt. Still it is a form of religion 
which requires of them either to break with it fun- 
damentally, or else to place their credence in the 
supernatural. But, as for the supernatural, that is 
to them unspeakably offensive. And it is in this 
way, therefore, that the religion of Jesus becomes 
what we announced it to be at the opening of the 



122 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

present chapter ; namely, the ultimate line of divis- 
ion between those among us who having ceased, 
indeed, to be either Protestants or Catholics, still 
believe in a religion in some traditional sense and 
form, or still believe in a religion, but in no tradi- 
tional sense or form. We of the one class still 
believe in the religion of Jesus, supernaturalism and 
all. We of the other class relegate the supernatural- 
ism of the religion of Jesus to the same regions with 
all other superstitions ; that is, what are to us all 
other superstitions. 



CHAPTER IX. 

RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 

It is indeed true, that, at least in its merely physi- 
cal forms, ecclesiastical persecution and punishment 
do not confront the heretic in this nineteenth cen- 
tury. He can both privately hold and publicly 
proclaim religious opinions which attack the very 
foundations at once of Catholicism and of Protes- 
tantism without any apprehension of either the theo- 
logical Star Chamber, the rack, or the stake. And 
yet even in these days ecclesiastical persecution and 
punishment are by no means either non-existent, or 
of such a nature as not to make the general observa- 
tion of Canon Mozley still perfectly true, that a man 
who in religious matters throws off the chains of 
authority and association must be a man of extraor- 
dinary independence of mind, and strength of mind. 
When, in 1835, Strauss published the initial volume 
of his first ''Life of Jesus," he was occupying the 
position of a theological instructor at Tubingen, 
with the most brilliant prospects before him, and 
beloved and honored of all. But even before the 

123 



124 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

appearance of the second volume he was summarily 
ejected from this position.^ As the unparalleled com- 
motion created by his work continued to increase, 
his own father turned away from him in anger ; his 
early teachers in divinity hastened to disavow all 
complicity with his opinions ; and "as for the friends 
and companions of my studies," says Strauss him- 
self, " these I had the mortification of seeing exposed 
to so much suspicion and annoyance for their merely 
rumored intimacy with me, so far as they refused 
to sacrifice it, as some did, to circumstances, that 
it became a point of conscientious duty not to 
expose them to still greater odium by any public 
memorial of our friendship." ^ In fact, had it not 
been for the steadfast sympathy and practical pecu- 
niary assistance rendered to Strauss by his affec- 
tionate brother William, his life for many a year 
after the pubHcation of " Das Lebeii Jesii " would 
have been one of more or less complete social isola- 
tion, and he might have also been either compelled 
to forego all future religious research, or else have 
been reduced to such straits to secure his livelihood 
as well-nigh to take up the lamentation : The foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but 
the modern religious outcast has scarcely where to 
lay his head. 

Take another illustration. Says a recent biog- 
rapher, M. Henri Harrisse : " The faculty of the 



RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 25 

Theological Seminary of Saint Sulpice were once 
engaged in preparing their annual examinations, 
when a young candidate for the deaconship, who 
had always been noted for his great modesty and 
studious habits, asked leave to submit a number of 
questions which perplexed his mind, and seemed to 
depress his religious spirit. Unless they were solved 
to his satisfaction he could not hope to enter into 
holy orders. His earnestness astonished and alarmed 
the entire faculty. They refused at once to examine 
questions which to them appeared novel or subver- 
sive ; and justly fearing that a neophyte who, on the 
threshold of the priesthood, was besieged with such 
misgivings, might become a cause of strife in the 
Church, they withheld their protection, and bade 
him depart from the consecrated place. This inquisi- 
tive and conscientious student was Joseph Ernest 
Renan." 3 

After bravely and patiently enduring an ordeal of 
poverty and privations almost without precedent in 
the history of a Parisian student, even in the Latin 
Quarter, M. Renan eventually succeeded in passing, 
with the highest honors, his examination for Uni- 
versity Professor of Philosophy. In due process of 
time his scholarly attainments and reputation became 
so pre-eminent that the professors of the College of 
France, together with the members of the French 
Institute, proposed to him that he should accept the 



126 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

professorship of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac 
languages and literature ; and he was thereupon 
appointed to this position by the eiTiperor.4 The 
clerical party looked upon the elevation of this heret- 
ical thinker to the oldest chair of the first institu- 
tion of the land with mingled anger and alarm. 
Forming themselves into a cabal, they endeavored, 
by their clamorous interruptions, to prevent his 
being so much as even heard on the day of his 
inauguration ; and on the day following, the official 
columns of "The Moniteur " contained a govern- 
mental decree suspending his course of lectures 
indefinitely. 

The clerical party had thus defiantly thrown down 
the gauntlet at the feet of Renan ; and just one year 
from the date of the memorable scene enacted in the 
College of France his answer appeared, in the form 
of the '^Vie de yesus'' 5 And, immediately upon the 
publication of this work, he became denounced from 
one end of Christendom to the other ; and that by 
Protestants as well as Catholics. In all orthodox 
circles he had become, in fact, at once as famous, 
and as infamous, as Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. 

Nor is this repressive theological method of dealing 
with the modern heretic at all peculiar either to Ger- 
many or France. No sooner, for instance, had the 
volume which was entitled " Essays and Reviews " 
appeared in England, than petitions, numerously 



RELIGIOUS REPRESSION, 12/ 

signed, began to be presented to the bishops to 
take judicial action against its authors. One of 
these petitions is computed to have contained the 
signatures of not less than nine thousand clergy- 
men of the Established Church. Judicial proceed- 
ings were commenced ; and Dr. Williams and Mr. 
Wilson were cited before the Court of Arches, the 
chief ecclesiastical tribunal of the country. This 
court decided that the parties arraigned had departed 
from the teachings of the Thirty-nine Articles on the 
inspiration of Holy Scripture, on the atonement, and 
on justification. The culprits were accordingly sen- 
tenced to undergo suspension from the performance 
of their clerical functions for a year, with the further 
penalty of costs, and the deprivation of their salaries. 
Fortunately, however, their case was subsequently 
brought before the Privy Council, where the decision 
of the Court of Arches against them was reversed.^ 

While the commotion caused by this ecclesiastical 
trial was still running at the highest, Dr. John William 
Colenso, Bishop of Natal, in South-eastern Africa, 
began to issue his work on the Pentateuch and the 
Book of Joshua. This at once diverted the attention 
of the general Anglican theological police force from 
all further formal pursuit of the Essayists and 
Reviewers, and they began forthwith to hunt down 
the bishop.7 

Crossing over to Scotland, every one knows how 



128 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

the declarations of certain modern scholarly views 
about the Bible, by Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
recently aroused the mediaeval biblicists to place him 
on trial for heresy, and resulted in his dismissal from 
the professorship of Hebrew in the Free College of 
Aberdeen. 

The simple truth is, that not a single man of 
any noted scholarship or genius connected with the 
modern religious movement has ventured to speak 
his mind in opposition to the traditional religious 
conceptions in any so-called Christian country, with- 
out being forthwith made to feel the full force either 
of ecclesiastical discipline or of ecclesiastical punish- 
ment, in so far as that discipline or that punishment 
could be brought to bear upon him. If he happened 
to be a clergyman, what he had to undergo is suf- 
ficiently indicated above, in what is said of Professor 
W. Robertson Smith, Colenso, and Strauss. If he 
happened to be a layman — well, Renan is a layman. 
Besides, Professor Huxley suspects that there are one 
or two other laymen still living, who, if the twenty- 
first century studies their history, will be found to 
have been recognized by the Christianity of the 
middle of the nineteenth century only as objects 
of vilification.^ If laymen can be made to experi- 
ence the effects of incurring the orthodox theo- 
logical odium in no other way, they can at least be 
stigmatized as anti-religious propagandists, material 
atheists, or something of the sort. 



RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 29 

But, when we speak thus of the orthodox theo- 
logical odium, it becomes incumbent upon us to do 
justice to a certain very considerable class among 
the Protestant divines. ** It is my privilege," says 
Professor Tyndall, "to enjoy the friendship of a 
select number of religious men, with whom I con- 
verse frankly upon theological subjects, expressing 
without disguise the notions and opinions I enter- 
tain regarding their tenets, and hearing, in return, 
these notions and opinions subjected to criticism. I 
have, thus far, found them liberal and loving men, — 
patient in hearing, tolerant in reply, — who know 
how to reconcile the duties of courtesy with the 
earnestness of debate." 9 

Nor is the experience of Professor Tyndall here, 
as a representative modern heretic, by any means 
exceptional. The orthodox divines do include among 
themselves this select number of men, who both in 
private intercourse and in all their public declara- 
tions, whether from the pulpit or through the press, 
treat the most revolutionary opponents of their re- 
ligious views as if the latter at least belonged to 
their common human brotherhood. Nor is this the 
case when they have to deal with the laity alone. 
Even when it becomes their official duty to partici- 
pate in the formal ecclesiastical proceedings which 
may be instituted against any among the clergy who 
may stand charged with a more or less fundamental 



130 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

departure from the teachings of the doctrinal stand- 
ards of their respective churches, the present writer, 
for one, has abundant reason to testify that they do 
so in a Hberal, loving, patient, tolerant spirit, and 
with the manifest reluctance of persons who have a 
painful task upon their ecclesiastical consciences to 
discharge, rather than with the manifest relish of that 
other, and far different, class among the orthodox 
divines who pass through the entire procedure as if 
it were at once their very meat and drink to aid in 
stamping out yet one more enemy of the faith once 
delivered to the saints. 

And yet even this latter class among the orthodox 
divines doubtless act with perfect conscientiousness. 
In attempting to put down at once the heretic and 
his heresy, they verily believe that they are doing 
God service. Indeed, the very sternness and relent- 
lessness of both their measures and their methods 
arise from this conviction. Nor can there be the 
slightest question, that, when they have to deal with 
any thing like a flagrant instance of heresy within 
the ministry itself, all the technical aspects of the 
case are plainly on their side. The orthodox clergy- 
man has entered into a formal compact that he will 
promulgate and defend certain specified doctrines, 
and that he will neither promulgate nor defend any 
contravening doctrines. So long as he adheres to 
the perfectly well-understood conditions of this com- 



RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 131 

pact, he is of course entitled to all the privileges, 
emoluments, and remunerations stipulated in the 
specific arrangements which he may have entered 
into with any given congregation, denominational 
institution, or the like. The moment he violates 
those conditions, at least in any fundamental man- 
ner, he is plainly and even justly, from a merely 
ecclesiastical point of view, at the mercy of his 
ministerial associates or superiors. But all this does 
not alter the fact, that every orthodox or evangelical 
clergyman is liable to be repressed for the expres- 
sion of non-evangelical religious opinions, and that, 
if he comes to indulge any such opinions in private, 
the only way in which he can hope to escape from 
being repressed, so far as it lies in the power of his 
particular branch of the church to repress him, is 
simply to keep both his tongue still and his pen still. 
But, if the orthodox divines have thus at least the 
manifest technical right to put down heresy within 
the ministry itself, it may still be enquired by what 
right they can proceed to make their theological 
onsets upon the heretical element among the laity. 
The answer to this inquiry would of course be evi- 
dent enough when the offending layman stood in a 
formal covenanted relation with any given orthodox 
organization or society. Church-members, as well 
as church-ministers, become the legitimate subjects 
of what is characterized as ecclesiastical discipline 



132 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

in case they come to an open rupture with the theo- 
logical standards of the churches to which they 
belong. 

Still the orthodox divines do not by any means 
confine their theological jurisdiction to either the min- 
isters or the members of their respective churches. 
Renan, for example, does not need to be a member 
of the Church of Rome, or Tyndall or Darwin or 
Huxley to be a member of the Church of England, 
in order that the orthodox divines should regard it 
as their peculiar prerogative and privilege to do 
their utmost to keep him out of any position of 
prominence and power, corresponding to that of the 
College of France for instance, and to do what they 
can likewise to destroy his general public influence 
by stigmatizing him as an atheist and anathematiz- 
ing him as an infidel and worse than an infidel. But 
even in this aspect of the case the conduct of the 
orthodox divines is not without its explanations, and 
certainly not without its provocations. For when 
laymen, who are also non-churchmen, as Renan and 
Tyndall, declare an open warfare upon the very reli- 
gious ideas and principles to propagate and defend 
which the great Catholic and Protestant churches 
have their organized existence, they at once place 
both the Catholic and the Protestant divines on the 
defensive. And it is not for those who declare the 
war to wonder, much less to complain, if they 
receive as well as give some ugly sword-thrusts. 



RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 33 

But it may be replied to this, that while the ortho- 
dox divines are doubtless perfectly justifiable in 
defending their various dogmas as best they may 
be able to do, when their dogmas are assaulted, they 
are clearly bound to do so by the employment of 
legitimate methods. The implication here is, that 
ecclesiastical repression is not to be numbered 
among such legitimate methods. Still, say what 
we will upon this point, the orthodox divines will 
continue to insist that ecclesiastical discipline is not 
merely a legitimate method of dealing with heretics, 
both among the orthodox ministry and among the 
orthodox church-membership, but that it is precisely 
the method of being dealt with to which both the 
orthodox ministry and the orthodox church-mem- 
bership have explicitly agreed that they will submit 
themselves upon becoming heretical. And yet even 
the orthodox divines ought by this time to be get- 
ting their eyes tolerably well opened to the fact that 
even if, from the strictly ecclesiastical point of view, 
ecclesiastical repression is to be legitimately em- 
ployed in putting down heretics and heresy within 
the church itself, from a logical point of view, eccle- 
siastical repression, considered merely as a means 
to an end, can have no relevancy whatever when it 
comes to be applied to the heretics and the heresies 
peculiar to the present religious epoch. For there 
is scarcely a single great religious or biblical ques- 



134 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

tion now up for discussion and decision which is 
not a more or less strictly intellectual one. Take, 
for example, the question of the authenticity of the 
fourth Gospel, or the question of the probable date, 
authorship, and general literary origin of the various 
books composing the Protestant canonical Scriptures, 
or the question of biblical inspiration, or the ques- 
tion of future punishment, or the question of the 
relation of the religion of Jesus to the religion of 
the Old Testament, on the one hand, and the gen- 
eral religion of the New Testament, on the other, 
or the question of Darwinism, or the question of 
evolutionism. What possible bearing can trials for 
heresy, ejections from professorships, depositions 
from the ministry, excommunications from the 
churches, anathemas and vilifications, have upon the 
intelligent and satisfactory solution of these and 
kindred problems } And from this time onward 
the orthodox divines will come increasingly to dis- 
cover that the less they presume to exercise mere 
ecclesiastical force simply to stifle out, whether on 
the part of the ministry or on the part of the laity, 
a full, dispassionate, scholarly, and scientific con- 
sideration of all these subjects, and manifold more 
which might readily be instanced, the better they 
will in the end subserve the very cause of orthodoxy. 
For, in the present condition of the general public 
temper, there is no disposition to permit the down- 



RELK^OUS REPRESSION. 1 35 

right suppression of intelligent objections to the 
traditional theology, whether Protestant or Catholic, 
or to the traditional theological views, whether of the 
Bible or religion, which objections demand investi- 
gation, research, reasoning, calm, judicial judgment. 
And any cause which condescends to undertake to 
defend itself against a purely intellectual assault vi 
et armis, will, for that very reason, more or less 
alienate from itself the general public sympathy, 
and tend to destroy confidence in itself in every 
thoughtful and cultured community. For it is sim- 
ply inevitable that thoughtful and cultured people 
should everywhere come more and more distinctly 
to perceive that any cause which is ev^en apparently 
driven to silence, rather than to answer its oppo- 
nents, is a cause which is at least very unpleasantly 
open to the suspicion that it is not intellectually 
capable of responding to its assailants. 



CHAPTER X. 

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

As has already been observed, the orthodox minis- 
try, as a class, have entered into a formal ecclesiasti- 
cal compact that they will promulgate and defend 
certain specified views of religion, and that they 
will neither promulgate nor defend any contravening 
ones. But this is merely another form of stating 
the fact that the orthodox ministry, as a class, have, 
for certain considerations of one description or 
another, formally relinquished their rights to the 
exercise of any thing but a perfectly one-sided reli- 
gious liberty. They are, indeed, free enough so 
long as they promulgate and defend their various 
denominational dogmas. But the moment they come 
to a radical rupture with any of those dogmas in 
their private convictions, and begin to think of 
proclaiming those convictions, they are at once 
confronted with the stipulated conditions of their 
ecclesiastical contract. If they venture openly to 
declare their denominational heresies, they must 
stand prepared to do so at every professional cost 
and every ecclesiastical peril. 
136 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 37 

Now, at least in the milder senses of the term, 
there are a great many heretics in the ranks of the 
evangelical ministry to-day, who are anxious to know- 
in how far, despite the strict provisions of their eccle- 
siastical compact, they are yet justified in employing 
their respective pulpits in making known, both to 
their parishioners and to the general public, in what 
particulars they can no longer either promulgate Or 
defend the articles of religious belief which are set 
forth dogmatically in their several denominational 
standards. Well, the only way in which they can 
practically solve this problem is simply to try the 
experiment. Some orthodox churches will accord to 
their individual ministers great liberty in this direc- 
tion, whereas other orthodox churches will accord to 
them either none or next to none. 

But the heretics among the modern evangelical 
ministry should never forget that how much or how 
little of their heresies shall or shall not be heard 
from their respective pulpits, is a matter which pri- 
marily belongs, as between themselves and their 
congregations, not with themselves, but* with their 
congregations, to decide. Orthodox congregations 
have their religious rights as well as the class of 
heretics in question. And among the religious 
rights of orthodox congregations none can be more 
manifest than this, — that they first of all are to be 
the judges whether they will or will not permit a 



138 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

clergyman, whom they expressly salary and support 
to promulgate and defend their denominational dog- 
mas, to turn directly about, and covertly undermine, 
if he does not openly assail, those dogmas. If any 
among these heretics desire a larger religious liberty 
than they can find any orthodox church prepared 
voluntarily to accord them, then let them either go 
and enjoy that liberty in some of the heterodox 
churches, or else abandon the ministry. 

But it is high time that both the orthodox churches 
as a body, and the general religious public, should 
thoughtfully consider the question in how far it is a 
desirable or an undesirable thing that there should 
exist great ecclesiastical organizations in which reli- 
gious thought, or at least in which religious expres- 
sion, is free only within the limits of their denomina- 
tional creeds and catechisms. And, in the first place, 
at such a transitional religious period as the present, 
this arrangement operates with a most demoralizing 
effect upon a very considerable element within the 
orthodox ministry itself. This element is the hereti- 
cal one. And that this element among the orthodox 
clergy is already quite a large one, and that its pro- 
portions are constantly on the increase, no one at all 
familiar with the facts of the case will for a moment 
think to dispute. It is not an element, indeed, which 
is inclined to betray its confidences to the heresy- 
hunters of the day, whether clerical or laical. But 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 1 39 

it will take any one who is himself a well-known 
heretic many a year to get over his surprises at the 
heretical confidences which gradually become reposed 
in him on the part of those who, as the expression 
goes, are still in good and regular standing in the 
orthodox ministry. Now it will be the pastor of 
some prominent pulpit, now it will be the editor of 
some leading evangelical organ of expression, now it 
will be some distinguished doctor of divinity who is 
either a college professor or even a theological pro- 
fessor, by whom the confidence is reposed. Indeed, 
we venture the suspicion, based upon our own per- 
sonal experience, that there is not a pronounced and 
outspoken heretic now before the public who could 
not make it exceedingly troublesome for a great 
many hitherto unsuspected heretics in the orthodox 
ministry, if he could only be base enough to bruit 
abroad the secrets which have been imparted to him. 
Now, what ethical ^effect have the various Protes- 
tant methods of confining at least all religious ex- 
pression within certain 'dogmatical limitations upon 
this special class of heretics t It forces them to a 
systematic and habitual concealment of their actual 
religious opinions. It frequently drives them to the 
public advocacy of religious opinions which they no 
longer either personally believe, or consider that any 
one else can give a valid reason for believing. It is 
very true that the way of escape from this slow but 



I40 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

sure process of moral deterioration and disintegration 
is open to them', if they can only make up their 
minds fearlessly to declare the altered condition of 
their religious views, undergo a formal trial for her- 
esy, and have their very names stricken from the 
rolls of orthodoxy. 

Some of the clergymen in question have already 
made up their minds to adopt this latter course, and 
others are doubtless on the point of doing so. At 
the same time v^e must not judge over-harshly those 
others among their number who still continue to 
promulgate and defend the old conceptions about the 
Bible, about religion, and the like, while they have 
come secretly and more or less fundamentally to ac- 
cept the new. To illustrate. Said Froude to the 
English clergy in 1864 : ** We can but hope and pray 
that some one may be found to give us an edition 
of the Gospels in which the difficulties will neither 
be slurred over with convenient neglect, nor noticed 
with affected indifference. It may or may not be a 
road to a bishopric ; it may or may not win the favor 
of the religious world ; but it will earn at least the 
respectful gratitude of those who cannot trifle with 
holy things, and who believe that true religion is the 
service of truth." ' 

Now, this is all perfectly easy for Mr. Froude to 
say. Mr. Froude is not himself a professional clergy- 
man. Mr. Froude has no prospects of a bishopric 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I4I 

to renounce. Mr. Froude has no particular reason 
to consider, in any of his proceedings or his pub- 
lications, whether he is about to secure the favor 
or the disfavor of the religious world. But let Mr. 
Froude, for the moment, put himself in the profes- 
sional clergyman's place. Let him then conceive 
that he is confronted with the question whether he 
will, or will not, put forth such an edition of the 
Gospels as he suggests above. He will then begin 
to say to himself : " If I do this, I will first of all be 
thrown out of my profession. I am rapidly approach- 
ing, if I am not actually beyond, the meridian of 
life. I have not merely myself to support, but a 
wife and children, for whom I must, in some way, 
provide at least their daily bread. I am more or 
less unfitted, by my whole clerical education, train- 
ing, and experience, to take up any other pursuit in 
life. Possibly I might become a teacher, for example. 
But that would indeed require to be a very rare and 
a very exceptional combination of circumstances 
which would enable me, after I became a branded and 
excommunicated clerical heretic, either to secure a 
remunerative position in connection with the general 
educational institutions, or to anticipate, with a rea- 
sonable degree of assurance, something like an ade- 
quate amount of purely private patronage." 

Looked at in this light, therefore, Mr. Froude will 
perceive that this whole matter of outspoken heresy 



142 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

is to the professional orthodox clergyman intensely 
practical ; and that it is likewise fraught on every 
hand with the most painful perplexities. And noth- 
ing can be more certain than thi*s ; namely, that 
if Mr. Froude were himself a professional orthodox 
divine, and were about to issue still another edition 
of the Gospels, he would be sorely tempted, con- 
sciously and intentionally, to slur over a great many 
difficulties with a very convenient neglect, and to 
notice many more with the customary nonchalance 
of the mediaeval biblicists when they have a case in 
hand which it is particularly embarrassing to manage. 
Whether he would, or would not, yield to this tempta- 
tion, is not, however, quite so certain. 

All honor, therefore, to that clergyman in the 
orthodox ranks, who, having ceased any longer to 
believe in a greater or less proportion of the more 
cardinal tenets of the general evangelical systems 
of theology, manfully speaks his mind, courageously 
undergoes the severest ecclesiastical procedures which 
can be instituted against him, accepts his ejection 
from the ministry with mingled dignity and fearless- 
ness, and heroically begins the battle for the main- 
tenance both of himself and those who may be de- 
pendent on him in some other calling or profession. 
But let us, at least, "neither think too severely, nor 
speak too severely, of that heretical clergyman in the 
orthodox communion who, whether from an innate 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 143 

timidity, or from a primary regard to those merely 
temporal considerations by which the average human 
brotherhood must ever be most powerfully and most 
decisively influenced, cannot bring himself up to the 
point of becoming at once a hero and a martyr. 

And it is precisely here that the immense practical 
importance of the remark we made above arises. 
Were it an easy thing for the heretical minister to 
renounce his profession as an orthodox divine, it 
would be a very easy thing for him to escape the 
moral damage which he must inevitably receive by 
remaining in his profession. But inasmuch as it is 
almost a life-and-death matter — not merely with 
himself, but likewise with his household — that he 
should remain in his profession, he will indeed need 
to be a man of exceptional resolution and of excep- 
tional regard to his absolute ethical integrity, if he 
does not remain in his profession, promulgating re- 
ligious doctrines which he no longer personally ap- 
proves, and defending denominational dogmas which 
he has abundant reason to know have long since 
been exploded. 

The orthodox divines who continue in perfect good 
faith to adhere to the traditional theological dogmas 
do not, of course, experience any of the evil ethical 
effects which we have pointed out as affecting the 
heretical class, by reason of having their religious 
thinking and their religious declarations confined 



144 ^-^^-^ PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

within the limits of their dogmas. But they do 
receive a mental damage which is as deplorable as it 
is undeniable. To illustrate. After the author had 
begun the composition of the present chapter, he 
chanced to get into conversation with an orthodox 
theological professor, whose mediaeval biblical attain- 
ments are such as to have secured his appointment 
among those distinguished biblical verbalists who 
are now at work upon the Oxford revision of the 
Scriptures passing through the press. The author 
refreshed the memory of this theological professor 
with regard to the very familiar fact that two of the 
Evangelists represent a certain miracle of Jesus as 
having been performed on the departure of Jesus 
out of Jericho, whereas another of the Evangelists 
says, as explicitly, that this same miracle was per- 
formed by Jesus on his entrance into Jericho. And 
what solution of these contradictory statements be- 
tween the Evangelists do you think the professor 
undertook to give .'* He said that when he himself 
was a student in divinity, the following explanation 
had been offered to his class : *' It is probable, or 
at least conceivable, that when the miracle was per- 
formed the different Evangelists had arrived upon the 
scene in an entirely different condition, — two of 
them worn out and weary, the other fresh and vigor- 
ous. When they afterward sat down, each by him- 
self, to place the miracle on record, to the two Evan* 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, I45 

gelists who were worn out and weary at the time of 
its performance it appeared as if the prodigy could 
not have been wrought until the departure of Jesus 
out of Jericho ; whereas to the other Evangelist, who 
was fresh and vigorous at the time of its performance, 
it seemed as if the wonderful work must have been 
done as early as the entrance of Jesus into Jericho." 
And, unfortunately, we have here only a representa- 
tive example of those intellectual puerilities which 
are begotten even among orthodox theological pro- 
fessors, and which are perpetuated from one genera- 
tion to another of those professors, in consequence 
of their being obliged professionally to confine all 
their mental movements within the narrow limita- 
tions of their little churchly dogmas. 

Moreover, even when the ratiocination of the 
orthodox divines is not so perfectly vapid as in the 
instance adduced above, its unsatisfactoriness and its 
evasiveness are as characteristic as they are notori- 
ous. It will be remembered, for example, that Pro- 
fessor Tyndall some time since enclosed, with his 
approval, an anonymous communication to the editor 
of "The Contemporary Review," proposing that the 
controverted question of the efificacy of prayer as a 
means of restoring the sick to health should be 
decided by means of a series of scientific tests. ^ 
This communication was afterward announced to 
have been written by Sir Henry Thompson ; and the 



146 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

point of his proposal is thus stated by himself: "I 
ask that one single ward or hospital, under the care 
of first-rate physicians and surgeons, containing cer- 
tain numbers of patients, afflicted with those diseases 
which have been best studied, and of which the mor- 
tality rates are best known, whether the diseases are 
those which are treated by medical or by surgical rem- 
edies, should be, during a period of not less, say, than 
three or five years, made the object of special prayer 
by the whole body of the faithful ; and that at the 
end of that time the mortality rates should be com- 
pared with the past rates, and also with those of 
other leading hospitals, similarly well managed, dur- 
ing the same period. Granting that time is given, 
and numbers are sufficiently large, so as to insure a 
minimum of error from accidental disturbing causes, 
the experiment will be exhaustive and complete. I 
might have proposed to treat two sides of the same 
hospital, managed by the same men ; one side to be 
the special object of prayer, the other to be exempted 
from all prayer. It would have been the most rigidly 
logical and philosophical method. But I shrink from 
depriving any of — I had almost said — his natural 
inheritance in the prayers of Christendom. Practi- 
cally, too, it would have been impossible. The un- 
prayed-for ward would have attracted the prayers of 
believers as surely as the lofty tower attracts electric 
fluid. The experiment would be frustrated. But the 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I47 

opposite character of my proposal will commend it 
to those who- are naturally the most interested in 
its success ; those, namely, who conscientiously and 
devoutly believe in the efficiency against disease and 
death of special prayer. I open a field for the exer- 
cise of their devotion. I offer an occasion of demon- 
strating to the faithless an imperishable record of 
the real power of prayer." 3 

No sooner, however, had Professor Tyndall become 
the public sponsor and the general theological scape- 
goat of this proposal by Sir Henry Thompson, than 
the orthodox divines began to treat him, he says, 
to a "free use of the terms 'insolence,' 'outrage,' 
'profanity,' and 'blasphemy.' " 4 But what possible 
relevancy had this "considerable amount of animad- 
version " 5 against Professor Tyndall towards decid- 
ing, from the experimental, scientific standpoint, 
whether prayer does, or does not, possess a veritable 
and verifiable sanitary value ? 

Still, some of the orthodox divines did something 
more than simply to denounce Professor Tyndall for 
lending his countenance to Dr. Thompson in connec- 
tion with his suggested prayer-test. Of these Presi- 
dent M'Cosh may be selected as among the best 
examples. The President offered two leading objec- 
tions. He said : " i. The proposal is not consistent 
with the method and laws of God's spiritual kingdom. 
The project, in fact, is imperious. . . . The project is 



148 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

not prescribed by God, nor is it one to which we can 
reasonably expect him to conform. Every intelli- 
gent defender of prayer has allowed a becoming 
sovereignty to God in answering the petitions pre- 
sented to him. ... 2. The project is not consistent 
with the spirit in which Christians pray. They pray 
because commanded to pray. They pray because it 
is the prompting of their hearts, commended by con- 
science. They pray because they expect God to 
listen to the o£fering-up of their desires. They pray 
because they expect God to grant what they pray 
for, so far as it may be agreeable to his will and their 
own good. But they shrink from praying as an 
experiment. . . . Such prayer, they feel, would im- 
ply doubt on their part, and might give offence to 
one who expects us to come to him as children unto 
a father. They fear that it might look as if they 
required him to answer prayer in a particular way, 
whether it may be for good or evil, and unjustifiably 
expose him to reproach, provided he refused to com- 
ply with the uncalled-for demand." ^ 

But all this is evasion, and evasion almost pure 
and simple. It is indeed true that the precise 
method of testing the sanitary value of prayer out- 
lined by Dr. Thompson is not propounded in the 
Bible. And yet a much more crucial test is pro- 
pounded in the Bible. That is where St. James 
explicitly instructs the Christian brotherhood, that, 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 49 

if any one of them is sick, he is to send for the 
elders of the church, in order that the elders may 
come and pray over him, anointing him with oil in 
the name of the Lord. And to this apostolical 
injunction is attached the specific assurance that 
the prayer of faith shall save him* that is sick. 7 If, 
therefore. President M'Cosh, as a representative 
of the orthodox divines, did not feel at liberty to 
decide the matter in dispute according to the pro- 
ject of Dr. Thompson, he certainly should have felt 
at liberty to challenge Dr. Thompson to have it 
decided according to the project of St. James the 
apostle. But no. The orthodox divines shrink from 
praying as an experiment. They fear that they 
might unjustifiably expose their Deity to reproach, 
provided he refuses to comply with the uncalled-for 
demand. As if the very object of the experiment, 
on the part of the unbelieving scientific world, would 
not be to discover the truth, whether there be any 
Divinity whatever who will hear the prayers of man 
in favor of the sick! As if the very object of the 
experiment, on the part of the believing, religious 
world, would not be the practical verification of the 
fact that the God of the Bible does heal the sick, as 
well as instruct men to pray to him that he will heal 
them ! And as to the demand being uncalled for, 
certainly, in an age when every thing that is super- 
natural is being more and more widely called in 



150 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

question, if ever the Deity — we speak it with rever- 
ence — should delight to have his children invoke 
some special and signal demonstration of his practi- 
cal regard and personal helpfulness to the suffering 
human brotherhood, that time is now. 

But just here we must guard ourselves against 
all misapprehension. Personally we do not by any 
means occupy the same standpoint in regard to the 
general subject of prayer with either Dr. Thompson 
or Professor Tyndall. Personally we not merely 
believe, if only as a matter of hereditary habit, in 
the efficacy of prayer, but endeavor to lead some- 
thing like a life of prayer. And if ever an experi- 
mental hospital should be established where the 
efficacy of prayer in the treatment of disease could 
be tested in the same scientific manner that the effi- 
cacy of good ventilation, or of any other remedial 
agent or agency, real or supposed, is tested, we 
should most assuredly be personally found upon the 
praying side, — at least, until the experiment had 
clearly^ proved a failure. But the whole trouble 
with the orthodox divines is inadvertently disclosed 
by President M'Cosh when he furthermore observes : 
" The proposal made in the letter forwarded by Pro- 
fessor Tyndall is evidently regarded as likely to be 
troublesome to religious men. If they accept, it is 
expected that the issue of the experiment will cover 
them with confusion. If they decline, they will be 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I5I 

charged with refusing to submit to a scientific test."^ 
Accordingly President M'Cosh, in common with his 
entire class of professional religious evasionists, 
coming to the private conclusion that the most pru- 
dential course would be to decline the experiment, 
undertakes to give the public certain reasons, such 
as they are, for not accepting it. But to this sort 
of thing Professor Tyndall very pertinently responds : 
" The theory that the system of nature is under the 
control of a Being who changes phenomena in com- 
pliance with the prayers of men is, in my opinion, 
a perfectly legitimate one. But without verification 
a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intel- 
lect. And while science cheerfully submits to this 
ordeal [of verifying or exploding its various hy- 
potheses], it seems impossible to devise a mode of 
verification of their theories which does not arouse 
resentment in the theological mind." 9 

The simple fact is, that the entire mental life 
which the orthodox divine is compelled to lead is 
such as to render his whole mental cast precisely 
the reverse of scientific. For the primary object 
in all truly scientific research is simply to discover 
the truth, whereas the primary object of the ortho- 
dox divine is simply to defend his dogma. That 
his dogma is true, he is always obliged to postulate. 
Whether his dogma is true or false, he is never at 
liberty candidly and impartially to inquire, except. 



152 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

indeed, argumentatively, and then only to proceed 
to contend that his dogma is doubtlessly true, and 
true beyond any reasonable sort of question. Which 
is all very well so long as the truthfulness of his 
dogma can be established by valid evidence and 
legitimate reasons. But by this time it must be 
perfectly apparent to the general reader that his dog- 
mas are far more frequently false than true. And, 
having such an enormous aggregate of false dogmas 
to support, he must of course endeavor to support 
them by evidence which is not valid and by reason- 
ing which is not legitimate. Hence his intellectual 
puerilities, hence his mental make-shifts and eva- 
sions, hence his apologetic subterfuges, hence his 
substitution of repression for argument, hence his 
employment of anathemas when he is unable to give 
an answer, hence, in a word, his theological, as op- 
posed to his scientific, tone and temper. 

Such, then, are some of the ethical injuries in- 
flicted upon the heretical element among the ortho- 
dox divines ; and such are some of the intellectual 
injuries inflicted upon the non-heretical element 
among the orthodox divines, in consequence of their 
having all their religious thinking, and particularly 
all their religious expression, confined within the 
limitations of their various denominational creeds 
and catechisms. 

Still this is a matter of direct practical moment 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 53 

only to the orthodox divines, and is of interest to 
the general public only to the extent that the gen- 
eral public is interested in the best ethical and intel- 
lectual condition of a special class of the common 
brotherhood of man. 

But there are other aspects of this subject in 
which the general public has a much more immedi- 
ate and vital interest. And, in the first place, if 
there has been any aggregate advancement made in 
the sum total of human knowledge which is fatal to 
a continued credence in many of the traditional theo- 
logical dogmas, the world has certainly no reason 
to congratulate the professional conservators of 
these dogmas for this advancement. And notably 
have the traditional theological conceptions about 
the Holy Scriptures been erected by those conserva- 
tors as a barrier against any such advancement. To 
illustrate. When the once celebrated question of 
the Antipodes first began to be discussed, the Bible 
was made, according to Professor Tyndall, the ulti- 
mate standard of appeal. And while such theolo- 
gians as Augustine, for instance, did not go so far 
as to deny the possible rotundity of the earth, still 
even Augustine did deny the possible existence of 
inhabitants at the other side, "because no such race 
is recorded in the Scripture." '° Again : when, 
after refraining to publish his book, *' De Revolution- 
ibus," for thirty-six years, Copernicus eventually 



154 '^^^ PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

ventured upon its publication, the Inquisition con- 
demned it as heretical, and. the congregation of 
the Index denounced his system as that *' false 
Pythagorean doctrine utterly contrary to the Holy 
Scripture." ^^ Nearly a century afterward Galileo 
also was accused of imposture, heresy, blasphemy, 
and atheism, for promulging the alleged anti-Scrip- 
tural theory that the earth revolves around the sun, 
and was compelled upon his knees, and with his 
hand upon the Bible, to abjure and curse this the- 
ory. ^2 In like manner, when Columbus proposed his 
voyages of discovery, the irreligious tendency of his 
proposal was pointed out by the Spanish ecclesias- 
tics, and condemned by the Council of Salamanca ; 
and its orthodoxy was confuted from the Pentateuch, 
the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels, and the 
Epistles.^3 

Now, in view of such unquestioned and unquestion- 
able historical facts as these. Professor John William 
Draper certainly does not over-state the truth when 
he insists that the Church, having set herself forth, 
Bible in hand, as the arbiter of knowledge, became a 
stumbling-block in the intellectual advancement of 
Europe for a thousand years. ^4 

But it may be objected that all this happened cen- 
turies ago, and at the hands of the Catholic Cl\urch, 
not of the Protestant. And yet Professor Draper is 
not altogether aside from the mark when he further- 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I55 

more maintains, that, so far as science is concerned, 
nothing is owed to the Reformation. '5 The Refor- 
mation adopted for its fundamental postulate the 
dogma that the Bible is the divinely inspired and 
therefore the infallible standard of truth. And it 
is well known that Protestantism has never been 
able, either in the past or in the present, to tolerate 
any scientific hypothesis or increment of knowledge 
hostile to the Bible. If any such hypothesis has 
eventually secured any thing like a general scientific 
acceptance, or any such increment of knowledge has 
come to prevail, it has done so in despite of Protes- 
tantism, and in despite of all the efforts of Protestant- 
ism at its suppression. If, for example, men no longer 
believe that the cosmos was created in six natural 
days of twenty-four hours, if Darwinism has gained 
any converts, or if the evolution theory of the crea- 
tion has met with any considerable progress, no 
thanks are due to Protestantism. All of these scien- 
tific truths, or theories whether true or false, and all 
other scientific truths, or theories whether true or 
false, which come in conflict with the teachings of 
the Bible, and which have been promulgated even in 
this nineteenth century, have been both combated 
and denounced alike by the Protestant pulpit and by 
the Protestant press from one end of Christendom to 
the other. 

Let it accordingly be distinctly understood. If 



156 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Protestantism, pure and simple, could have its way, 
the Bible, or rather an organized and most powerful 
body of theological police force in the name of the 
Bible, would dominate thought, would dominate re- 
search, would dominate discovery, and never permit 
the world to get beyond that measure of intellectual 
development and progress peculiar to those far-off 
ages of the world when the Bible had its origin. 
And it is high time that the general Protestant 
public should become more and more familiarized 
with the fact, that the fundamental postulate of Prot- 
estantism concerning the infallible truthfulness of 
the Bible is a fundamental falsity. And it is high 
time also that the general Protestant public should 
begin to arise more and more eji masse against that 
organized and most powerful body of theological 
police force, which, in the name of the Bible, still 
undertakes to say alike to the physicist, to the phi- 
losopher, to the educator, to the journalist, and to the 
man of letters, for example : "Thus far shall you go, 
but no farther. Either promulgate what the Scrip- 
tures teach, or else we will combine in the effort to 
repress you." 

But the general Protestant public, or at least a 
very large element in that public, is concerned in 
demanding its emancipation from the domination, 
not to say from the domineering, of this theological 
police force from the religious point of view as well 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 157 

as from the more or less strictly intellectual. It is 
true that for certain millions of very excellent and 
pious people the Catholic Church still continues to 
furnish a perfectly satisfactory form of religious belief 
and practice. It is equally true that for certain other 
millions of very excellent and pious people the vari- 
ous Protestant churches still j^erform a kindred ser- 
vice. But it is likewise true that for thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of the most deeply religious 
natures scattered all over Christendom neither the 
Catholic Church, nor all of the Protestant churches 
considered as a body, can any longer pretend to have 
the remotest religious mission. And while these lat- 
ter persons are resignedly willing to be still further 
expostulated with, and prayed over, and would be 
only too thankful to return to the faith of their 
fathers if such a thing were possible, they must still 
most earnestly protest against having their heretical 
heads any longer belabored with the orthodox eccle- 
siastical police clubs. While they recognize the per- 
fect right of the Protestant to remain a Protestant, 
and of the Catholic to remain a Catholic, without 
either repression or denunciation, they also claim the 
perfect right both to become and to continue neither 
Protestant nor Catholic, without being either stigma- 
tized as anti-religionists, or vilified as infidels and 
atheists. 

Lest, however, in speaking as we have done of the 



158 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

orthodox ecclesiastical police force, we may appear to 
have done a flagrant injustice to not a few among 
the orthodox divines, we hasten to make this qualify- 
ing remark. Very many of these divines — and we 
here refer specifically to very many of these Protes- 
tant divines — have inherited the very worst spirit 
and the very worst characteristics of the very worst 
of the old-time inquisitors. There is among them 
more than one Calvin, there are among them more 
than one thousand Calvins, who, if such a thing 
would be tolerated in this nineteenth century, would 
not hesitate for a single moment, either to burn 
every modern Servetus, or to make him publicly- 
renounce his heresies. But, while this is true, it 
is likewise true that a very large proportion of the 
Protestant clergy of the present day, who still re- 
main essentially orthodox in their religious belief, do 
not in any sense partake of the old inquisitorial 
spirit. As we have already said in the foregoing 
chapter, these latter clergymen are at once liberal 
and loving in all their relations with us modern here- 
tics. Nor is this all ; for their voices are always 
heard, both in the pulpit and in the press, and even 
in the collective ecclesiastical councils, bravely up- 
lifted in favor of the most catholic religious tolera- 
tion, and the widest religious liberty. 

We must here also distinctly recognize, as we did 
in the preceding chapter, that the lineal descend- 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 59 

ants of the ancient heretic-killers, which still more 
or less abound among the Protestant divines, act 
with perfect conscientiousness. They believe, for one 
thing, that every assailant of their dogmas, and nota- 
bly that every assailant of the traditional theological 
views about the Holy Scriptures, is an open and im- 
pious enemy of the very truth of God, and that, as 
such, it is among their most binding religious obliga- 
tions to kill, no longer himself indeed, but his entire 
public influence, — if they can, and as they can. But 
we certainly discovered enough above, when discuss- 
ing the question of the inspiration of the Bible, to be 
justified here in insisting that it is perfectly prepos- 
terous any longer to maintain that the Holy Scrip- 
tures, as a whole, contain the very truth of God, and 
nothins: but the truth of God. And under these cir- 
cumstances it becomes a perfectly legitimate under- 
taking to seek to discover in how far the Holy 
Scriptures do contain the very truth of God, and in 
how far they likewise contain errors of almost every 
description incident, and necessarily incident, to the 
times and conditions under which the various bibli- 
cal writings were originally composed. And as for 
us modern biblicists who have undertaken in one 
way or another, and from one standpoint or another, 
to contribute something towards the solution of this 
most important problem, we have simply to say to 
the Protestant divines in question : ** Let us alone. 



l60 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

We have precisely the same right to search for the 
actual truth, as distinguished from the actual error, 
which exists in the Bible, as we have to search for 
the actual truth, as distinguished from the actual 
error, which exists in any other book, or in any 
other department of investigation. And, what is 
more, we propose, whether you let us alone or not, 
to exercise this right until we have eventually arrived 
at something like a full and final answer to this 
problem," 

Another element which enters into the entire con- 
scientiousness of the would-be modern Protestant 
heretic-extinguishers is their profound and most de- 
vout conviction that the eternal well-being or ill- 
being not merely of the heretic himself, but of all 
others whom the heretic may influence, hangs sus- 
pended on the prompt and utter extinction of all 
religious views- which fundamentally contravene the 
religious views propounded in their dogmas, or, as 
they might prefer to say, propounded in the Bible, 
the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. But 
these Protestant divines should remember, that in the 
Papal Syllabus of Errors it is explicitly maintained 
that no man may obtain eternal salvation in any form 
of religion except the Catholic, and that all Protes- 
tants in particular are put without the pale of ever- 
lasting hope, and impliedly consigned to the everlast- 
ing burning. ^^ Does this frighten Protestants.? No 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l6l 

more does it frighten us modern heretics, who are 
neither Protestants nor Catholics, that we are eccle- 
siastically consigned to the everlasting burning be- 
cause of our radical rupture with all the traditional 
forms of religion save that of Jesus and Jesus only. 
Jesus, as we have substantially shown above, was nei- 
ther a Protestant nor a Catholic. No more was Jesus, 
in any current conception of the term, a Christian. 
That is to say, the religion of Jesus is not only a vast- 
ly different thing from all the dogmatic systems of 
theology, whether Protestant or Catholic, but likewise 
a vastly different thing from the religion of the Bible, 
the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. And if 
in adopting the religion of Jesus, in distinction from 
all the other traditional forms of religion, whether 
Protestant or Catholic, we modern heretics come to 
find ourselves in the eternal v^^orld lamenting our 
condition in the deepest depths of darkness, it will 
be at least one drop of water to cool our parching 
tongues that we are keeping company with Jesus. 
In other words, our devotion to Jesus — the personal 
Jesus of history — is so great, our confidence in his 
religious system is so complete, and our consecration 
to his service is so absolute, that we are perfectly 
resigned, not only to follow after him in life, but 
likewise to share his fortunes after death, whatever 
may be the nature of those fortunes. 

But what of that other class of modern heretics 



1 62 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

who have broken with every traditional form of 
religion, even to the extent of parting company with 
the religion of Jesus, at least altogether on the side 
of its supernaturalism ? To this we answer, that, so 
long as these heretics continue to adhere — as we 
have seen above that the vast majority of them do 
continue to adhere — to the ethical side of the 
religion of Jesus, and to put that ethical system into 
practice, perhaps their prospects for the future are 
not so utterly appalling, after all, excepting only in 
the groundless apprehensions of the orthodox divines. 
For with these heretics, as with all others of the 
common human brotherhood, it shall, for example, 
remain forever true : Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God. Blessed are they which are 
persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven. But in what Gospel does the 
historical Jesus declare that the divine benedictions 
and beatitudes shall hereafter be bestowed on those, 
indeed, who continue faithful unto death in believing 
in the supernatural, and that from all others those 
benedictions and beatitudes shall be withholden by 
the Deity of Jesus, — even though the Deity of Jesus 
doubtless is conceived to be a God who answers 
prayer, performs a special providence, and even 
works perhaps, now and then, a miracle? 

Besides, no matter how far the one class or the 
other class of the heretics now immediately in ques- 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 163 

tion may, or may not, have gone astray in their con- 
scientious religious convictions, hard words can never 
reclaim them ; and no priestly pledges of good things 
in the long hereafter can allure them any more than 
any priestly predictions of bad things in the long 
hereafter can intimidate them. So far as that here- 
after is concerned, they are impervious alike to 
priestly bribes and priestly threats. If they are 
actually wrong in their religious views, they do not 
wish to hear any mere jingling of the traditional 
ecclesiastical keys, accompanied with such observa- 
tions, in effect, as these : Accept this set of religious 
views, and here is for you the master-key of an 
everlasting heaven : reject this set of religious views, 
and here is for you the master-key of an everlasting 
hades. They wish to be convinced by calm and 
dispassionate reasoning, and by downright demon- 
strable fact, that they are indeed in error. And, if 
this be not done with them, they will remain, as 
Professor Huxley substantially remarks, content to 
follow their own conceptions of reason and fact, in 
singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they 
may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men 
will be to them far more endurable than any mere 
paradise replete with — angelic shams.^7 

But, positively, incomplete and fragmentary as it 
is, we must now begin to bring this discussion to a 
termination. The fact is, that the topic here touched 



164 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

upon, like all of the preceding topics, is one to which 
a volume, rather than a chapter, might have easily 
been devoted. But we have all along proceeded on 
the supposition that we are addressing ourselves to 
an audience of exceedingly busy men and busy 
women, who would prefer to have a series of what 
Froude would characterize as short studies on great 
subjects, than to have an exhaustive and elaborate 
study on any given subject. Specialists in the vari- 
ous departments of modern biblical and religious 
research would, of course, prefer the volume to the 
chapter ; the elaborate and exhaustive study to the 
short one. But busy men and busy women, who are 
not specialists, and yet who are by the hundreds of 
thousands at the present religious epoch most pro- 
foundly interested in every department of this re- 
search, only care to have some of the bottom 
thoughts and data placed before them, in view of 
which they may be able to arrive at their own con- 
clusions, and that not so much concerning details as 
concerning outlines, not so much concerning special 
aspects as concerning large controlling issues. 

When we shall have made one or two additional 
observations, therefore, in connection with the sub- 
ject of this chapter, we will then consider that we 
have trespassed upon the reader's time and attention 
as far as we may presume to do so. And, in the first 
place, there can be no question that the general cause 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 1 65 

of religious liberty is making an advancement to-day 
in all the Protestant churches which is at once aston- 
ishing and well-nigh incredible. The old dogmas 
are no longer preached by the vast majority of the 
Protestant divines with any thing like the old em- 
phasis, persistency, and stringency. The heretical 
element among these divines is, as we have said, 
already large, and continually on the increase. The 
liberal, loving, tolerant, catholic-minded element 
among them is already a recognized power within 
the ranks of Protestantism, and destined ere long 
to exercise a more and more controlling influence. 
And, as for the laity, it is difficult to say what 
heresies they may not now both privately indulge in 
and publicly promulgate, with none so brave as to 
inaugurate a formal movement to cast them out of 
the synagogue. In a word, particularly the clergy, to 
say nothing of the laity, in nearly all the Protestant 
communions, without distinction or exception, can 
to-day take religious liberties with almost a perfect 
impunity, which a quarter of a century ago, or even 
ten years ago, they could not have ventured upon 
without at least incurring the risk of being promptly 
cited before their respective ecclesiastical police 
courts. And all of the present tendencies and in- 
dications are, that a still larger and larger religious 
liberty will come to prevail throughout the length 
and breadth of Protestantism. And yet nothing can 



1 66 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

be more manifest than this ; namely, that Protestant- 
ism can never permit within its own ranks, and, 
above all, can never permit within the ranks of its 
own ministry, any such rehgious liberty as is de- 
manded by the extremer religious developments of 
the present age and hour. To do so would be 
deliberately to become a party to its own dissolu- 
tion. And it only remains for those who desire this 
latter kind of liberty simply to take it, and to take it 
by taking their public departure out of Protestant- 
ism, and to identify themselves, in every practicable 
manner possible, with what may be characterized as 
the Reformation of the nineteenth, as contrasted with 
the Reformation of the sixteenth, century. 

Prolonged as this chapter has already become, it 
would still be unpardonable to bring it to a con- 
clusion without a single specific allusion to that 
perhaps most potent of all modern public influ- 
ences, by which we mean the press. 

The domination of ecclesiasticism over this mighty 
public power in the past, we all know to have been 
almost supreme and absolute. And, had the matter 
only ended with the past, we might then be content 
to let the dead past bury its dead. But, even at 
the present moment, ecclesiasticism, and Protestant 
ecclesiasticism, would not hesitate to establish, if it 
could do so, a strict religious censorship over every 
volume, over every periodical, and over every daily 



REUGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 67 

and weekly, issued anywhere in Christendom. And 
we are not here referring to the various denomina- 
tional lines of religious literature. We do not deny 
the right of the Protestant potentates and powers to 
insist that their denominational publishing establish- 
ments, and their denominational organs of expression, 
shall publish, and publish only, in the interests of 
their dogmas. But what we do here refer to, and 
what we do here most emphatically protest against, 
is the effort made by these potentates and powers to 
dictate to the secular press at large what religious 
views it shall or shall not disseminate among the 
masses. To illustrate, and to speak of facts alone, 
of which we have a personal and inner knowledge. 
Even so recently as 1873, ''Scribner's Monthly" — 
the name of which has since been changed to that 
of "The Century Magazine" — ventured to publish, 
for the present writer, a series of papers, entitled 
" Modern Scepticism." ^^ For reasons which need 
not here be detailed, these papers were, to the very 
last degree, obnoxious to the potentates and powers 
in question. Some of them made a public demand 
for a new editorship of the Monthly. Others rushed 
into the pulpit, and denounced the Monthly itself, 
with the view of influencing their parishioners to 
withdraw from it their patronage. And one dis- 
tinguished doctor of divinity in particular, starting 
out with the declaration that "*Scribner' must be 



1 68 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

Stamped out," not only undertook to organize, but 
actually succeeded in organizing, what was perhaps 
the most powerful ecclesiastical combination against 
the religious freedom of, the modern secular press 
ever brought together in these United States. 

To this the late lamented Dr. J. G. Holland — 
that brave and noble spirit, who was then the con- 
ducting editor of ** Scribner " — editorially responded, 
that the papers on " Modern Scepticism " were only 
preliminary to others of a kindred nature, by the 
same author, which were to follow, and that from 
publishing those future papers no opposition could 
frighten him, and no amount of vituperation could 
drive him. ^9 "Our method," he said, "is simply to 
substitute a non-partisan investigation for partisan 
controversy, and to establish, by an appeal to the 
universal reason and heart, that which not only does 
not stand by force of ecclesiastical authority, but 
which totters under its weight. In this work we 
ask and claim the sympathy of all Christian men 
and women. To it we invite their attention. The 
letters which we receive from every part of the 
country, and our constantly increasing list of readers, 
show how deep an interest is everywhere taken in 
the subject, and prove to us that we have neither 
misinterpreted the signs of the times, nor misdirected 
our efforts." ^o 

Meanwhile the author, on his part, had, in the main, 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 69 

retired again into the silence of his study, in order to 
make something far more remotely approaching to 
an adequate preparation before presuming to begin 
to spread before the public some of the more im- 
portant results which must inevitably obtain when 
the non-partisan and the non-controversial method 
of investigation comes to be faithfully and impar- 
tially applied to nearly every fundamental tenet of 
the traditional theology. 

After an additional year or two had been passed 
by us in this way, we ventured at last to forward to 
Dr. Holland a specimen paper, in which some of these 
results were stated, or rather were foreshadowed. 

In reply, the doctor wrote to us. May 21, 1875, 
among other things, as follows: "Your last article 
was received, and I have read it to-day. At the 
conclusion of its perusal I find myself called upon 
to make the most important decision that has ever 
come to me for its making since I became an editor. 
I must be frank with you. I believe you are right. 
I should like to speak your words to the world ; but, 
if I do speak these, it will pretty certainly cost me 
my connection with the Magazine. This sacrifice I 
am willing to make, if duty requires it. I am afraid 
of nothing but doing injury to the cause I love. . . . 
In short, you see that I sincerely doubt whether the 
Christian world is ready for this article. The belief 
in the Bible is so deep, and so sincere, that an article 



170 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

like this, unprepared for, — without having been led 
up to, — would produce an awful shock. American 
Christians at large are not ready for the revolution 
which this article inaugurates. Instead of the theo- 
logians, the people would howl. ... I cannot yet 
carry my audience in such a revolution. Perhaps I 
shall be able to do so by and by ; but, as I look at it 
to-day, it seems impossible. I hope you understand 
that I do not shrink from personal sacrifice in this 
matter, and that I am afraid of nothing but making 
the people believe that I have betrayed them. The 
article is a thunderbolt. . . . My dear friend, I believe 
in you. You are in advance of your time. You have 
great benefits in your hands for your time. You are 
free and true. And I mourn sadly, and in genuine 
distress, that I cannot speak your words with a tongue 
which all my fellow Christians can hear. They will 
not hear them yet. They will some time." 

So far as we can recall, the article referred to 
above by Dr. Holland related to the divine and in- 
fallible inspiration of the Bible. How far the views 
put forth in the present volume on the same subject 
were, or were not, germinal in that paper, which has 
long since been destroyed, we cannot just now be 
certain. Still we deem it only simple justice to say 
that nothing in the foregoing letter should be con- 
strued by the reader as lending the personal indorse- 
ment of Dr. Holland to any of the heresies promul 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I /I 

gated in this book, whether on the subject of biblical 
inspiration or any other subject. In such matters 
as these 1875 is a long while ago; and we are *our- 
selves so much more of a heretic at large to-day than 
we then anticipated that we should ever become, that 
we have not the remotest idea that Dr. Holland could 
have possibly kept up an equal pace with us in his 
departure from the traditional Protestant conceptions 
about the Bible and religion. Indeed, so far as we 
can affirm any thing from our personal and positive 
knowledge, we should say that, broadly speaking, he 
must, on the other hand, have departed this life in 
the firm belief, not in all, but in most, of the leading 
essentials of the faith of his fathers. 

It would also be the gravest injustice to Dr. Hol- 
land to impute his reluctant decision not to publish 
our paper instanced to any lack of moral courage. 
Other things he may have lacked, but moral courage 
never. This country — at least in our judgment — 
has yet to produce the man who would have braved 
more, or, if need be, would have sacrificed more, in 
standing firmly by his deepest conscientious convic- 
tions. But he was altogether in the right in giving 
earnest heed, lest by the insertion of that particular 
paper in ** Scribner " he should give the people occa- 
sion to believe that he had betrayed them. The 
name which " Scribner's Monthly " bore, the publish- 
ing-house by which it was issued, and Dr. Holland's 



172 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

own pronounced religious position before the country 
prior to his becoming its editor-in-chief, were in the 
form of a pledge to the general orthodox religious 
public that the periodical would not, at least under 
his conductorship, inaugurate any revolutionary at- 
tacks upon the current orthodox conceptions about 
the Bible and religion. In a word, Dr. Holland 
possessed just that combination of moral heroism 
and practical judgment which the exigencies of his 
editorial position demanded at such a transitional 
religious epoch as the present. He knew just in 
how far it was right for him to permit us modern 
heretics to find expression through " Scribner," and 
from permitting us to find this expression no super- 
orthodox ecclesiasticism could either intimidate or 
drive him. He also knew in how far loyalty to the 
general orthodox constituency of *' Scribner" de- 
manded that he should not permit us modern heretics 
to find expression through its columns, and there the 
matter ended. And yet all this does not in any wise 
militate against the fact, that the orthodox religious 
domination over the secular press of this country is 
still so great that even Dr. Holland, with all his 
popular prestige and power, did not care to venture 
the experiment of publishing in the pages of " Scrib- 
ner" for 1875, an article, no matter by what author, 
against the current conceptions of the infallible in- 
spiration of the Bible, which article he believed to 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 73 

be essentially in the right, and also to follow this up 
with the publication of other kindred papers, which 
he felt perfectly assured, however mistakenly, would, 
in the final outcome, prove of signal service to his 
times. 

And just here it deserves a special mention, and 
demands a special emphasis, that the prematureness 
of the article in question constituted the underlying 
reason why Dr. Holland felt that it would cost him 
his editorial position on the staff of "Scribner," in 
case he gave it to the world. Here, in fact, this special 
aspect of religious domination over the secular press 
simply continues to repeat itself. Were a scientific 
discussion, for example, now to appear, corresponding 
to the *' De Revolutionibus " by Copernicus, not even 
the Catholic Church would presume to place it in the 
Index, merely because of its advocacy of the helio- 
centric conception of the cosmos. It is only when 
an anti-theological or an anti-Scriptural theory, or 
thought, or system of thought, is before its time, and 
begins to struggle for expression, that the orthodox 
religious world undertakes to interdict the secular 
press from its publication. After it has once found 
expression through the secular press, and been either 
established or exploded, then the full freedom of the 
secular press, either to promulgate it further, or to 
let it die in silence, is quietly conceded. But, if 
experience can teach the orthodox religious world 



174 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

any thing except the persistent repetition of its 
blunders, experience should certainly have taught 
the orthodox religious world by this time that noth- 
ing can be more futile than for it to prolong this idle 
effort of seeking any longer to intimidate the secular 
press, whether of this or any other so-called Christian 
country, from being the first to bring the more ad- 
vanced thinkers of the times into communication 
with the public, — no matter how subversive of all 
the traditional religious conceptions their thoughts 
or theories may be. The orthodox religious world 
may indeed succeed, and does, as a matter of fact, 
succeed, in causing this or that particular representa- 
tive of the modern secular press to shrink from doing 
this. But what one publishing-house or periodical or 
newspaper lacks the moral courage to publish, another 
publishing-house or periodical or newspaper is sure to 
give to the people. The simple truth is, that there 
does not exist to-day anywhere, in at least the Prot- 
estant portions of Christendom, a single thorough- 
going heretic who needs to die in silence, even though 
he be in advance of his generation by a whole mil- 
lennium. If he really has any thoughts or theories 
to place before his contemporaries which are worthy 
of their consideration, whether those thoughts or theo- 
ries are true or false, some modern secular editor or 
publisher is just as certain to stand prepared to lay 
them before the public as the present century is the 
nineteenth and not the sixteenth. 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1/5 

Nor are these secular editors or publishers just 
referred to precisely what they used to be. To ex- 
plain. Professor Philip Schaff evidently rolls it as a 
sweet morsel under his tongue, that he can say of 
George Eliot's — or rather of Miss Marian Evans's 
— translation of the first "Life of Jesus," by Strauss, 
that it '* was republished in New York by some ob- 
scure house in 1850." ^i Well, we suppose that, so 
far back as 1850, it would have been only some ob- 
scure house in New York, or any other city of this 
country, which would venture to give such an arch- 
heretic as Strauss a formal introduction, even to the 
most limited circle of American readers. We sup- 
pose, also, that at that time it would have been only 
some obscure and so-called infidel sheet which would 
venture to disseminate the views of Strauss, in the 
abridged form of statement peculiar to the daily or 
the weekly newspapers, with any degree of truthful- 
ness and fairness. It must have been somewhat 
■later than 1850 that Renan remarked: ** Of all the 
thinkers of Germany, Strauss is least appreciated in 
France. Most people know him only through the 
abuse of his adversaries." ^2 And, unless our memory 
is very much at fault, it must have been somewhat 
later than 1850 that Strauss was likewise known by 
most people on this side of the Atlantic only through 
the abuse of his adversaries. In those days nearly 
every prominent publishing-house and religious organ 



1/6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

of expression was open enough indeed to the orthodox 
assailants of Strauss, but neither to Strauss himself, 
nor to any other radical and fearless modern religious 
revolutionist. But it is a characteristic of our times, 
that, in all matters of this practical character and 
moment, a changed condition of things, having once 
fairly begun to prevail, progresses so rapidly that the 
former condition of things appears to have receded, 
as in an instant, to almost forgotten epochs. The 
transition from the old condition to the new is almost 
telegraphic. It can scarcely be said, for example, 
that the American translation of Renan's "■ Life of 
Jesus " was published by some obscure house in 
New York in 1868. On the other hand, it was pub- 
lished by one of the best-known and most respectable 
publishers in the metropolis. And what is true of 
the American publisher of the principal works of 
Renan, is likewise true of the American publishers 
of the principal works of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, 
Spencer, Haeckel, Biichner, and the like. These 
publishers are among the most prominent, the most 
powerful, the most reputable, now connected with our 
general American literature. 

Another circumstance of paramount practical im- 
portance to us modern heretics is this. We question 
whether twenty-five years ago a single respectable 
bookseller in this country would have openly exposed 
what was then called an infidel book for sale in his 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 77 

place of business. He might or might not have been 
willing to secure a copy of it upon order, to oblige 
a patron. But, even if he did so, he would, in all 
probability, have done so stealthily, and, in a manner, 
secretly. But in these days no leading bookseller 
hesitates any more to expose a heretical work for 
sale, or to furnish it on order, than he would in case 
it were the most orthodox production of the most 
orthodox divine, and, at the same time, in the highest 
favor with the general religious world. 

So far as we heretics are concerned, therefore, we 
have little more to desire in this direction. We not 
only have our fair proportion of the most influential 
bookmakers to publish for us ; we likewise have the 
booksellers of the nation, almost in a body, to cir- 
culate our volumes far and wide among the people. 

Nor have we any thing to complain of, on the 
whole, at the hands of the periodicals. It is true 
that the great majority of the leading popular maga- 
zines are still too largely dependent upon the orthodox 
patronage to make it judicious for them to permit 
us to inaugurate any formal religious movements in 
their pages of a very revolutionary nature. Still, even 
they will now and then become our public mouth- 
pieces in saying some decidedly heretical things, and 
such heretical things as will throw pretty much the 
entire orthodox world into something like that common 
condition of uproar into which the heretical Paul once 



178 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

threw the orthodox populace at Ephesus. And, if 
this be not enough, the mere names of "■ The Con- 
temporary Review " and of " The Nineteenth Cen- 
tury," in England, coupled with those of ''The North 
American Review" and of ''The Popular Science 
Monthly," here among ourselves, furnish a sufficient 
guarantee, that, in so far as we have any occasion to 
employ the periodical press, the periodical press is 
already sufficiently accessible to us, and, even before- 
hand, placed at our disposal. 

Our acknowledgments are likewise due to nearly 
every one of the great leading daily papers. If a 
communication be sent to them touching upon any 
one of the more popular aspects of modern biblical 
or religious discussion, they will never for a moment 
pause to inquire whether such communication is or- 
thodox or heterodox. Their only question about the 
communication will be whether, both in its subject- 
matter and in its limits and method of presentation, 
it is adapted for publication in their columns, and is, 
at the same time, likely to prove of general interest 
and concernment to their readers. But, other things 
being equal, the signature of Professor Philip Schaff, 
for example, or President M'Cosh, or Principal Daw- 
son, will no sooner secure for it an insertion than 
would the signature — say of Professor Tyndall, 
Professor Huxley, or even Ernest Renan. 

The orthodox religious world, therefore, cannot 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 79 

come either too soon or too thoroughly to under- 
stand the fact, that, so far as all practical purposes 
are concerned, the days of its religious domination 
over the secular press of Christendom at large arc 
among the by-gones. It can continue, indeed, to 
rule over its, denominational organs of expression, 
over its boards of publication, over its tract societies, 
and the like ; but the secular press does not propose 
any longer to submit even to a religious censorship, 
much less to a religious dictatorship. 

In fact, not a few of the distinctively religious 
journals are in these days making themselves ex- 
ceeding vexatious, not to say to the last degree 
obnoxious, to the super-orthodox among the Pro- 
testant potentates and powers, by the liberties they 
are taking. Contrast, for example, in this respect, 
such publications as either "The New York In- 
dependent" or ** The Christian Union," with such 
other publications as either **The Christian Intelli- 
gencer" or "The New York Observer." The latter 
represent the conservative, the non-progressive, the 
mediaeval, the repressive, the inquisitorial spirit; the 
former, within evangelical limits, represent the pro- 
gressive, the modern, the liberal, loving, and catholic- 
minded spirit, in present Protestant journalism. 

And now another paragraph or two, and we have 
done. 

Professor Hurst informs us that when the first 



l80 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

'' Life of Jesus " — that earthquake-shock of the 
nineteenth century — appeared in Germany, the 
most obscure provincial journals contained copious 
extracts from it, and vied with each other in defend- 
ing or opposing its positions.23 Pressense says that 
the people of France have been initiated into the 
conclusions of Strauss, though they may have never 
even heard of the famous '^ Leben yesii^' and that 
Renan's " Vie de ye'stis " has been there, as elsewhere 
in all Christian countries, very widely circulated. 
He likewise laments that scepticism should there 
find its way into the lightest publication ; that the 
novel and the newspaper should emulate each other 
in its diffusion ; and that the short review articles, 
skilled in giving grace and piquancy to erudition, 
should furnish it with arguments which appear 
weighty, because they are so in comparison with the 
pleasantries of Voltaire.24 And Professor George P. 
Fisher feels it his duty to warn the very Christian 
teachers of this country that they are not aware how 
widely the seeds of unbelief are scattered through 
books and journals which find a hospitable welcome 
even in Christian households. 25 

Under these circumstances we modern heretics 
may well take heart again, and address ourselves, 
in the various departments of modern biblical and 
religious thought and research, with a renewed 
energy and vigor, to whatever task may have been 



* RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l8l 

specifically and individually allotted to us in connec- 
tion with the great religious movement now in prog- 
ress throughout the length and breadth of Chris- 
tendom. With at least the secular press so manifestly 
and so generally for us, what does it signify, even 
though the whole orthodox religious world should be 
against us ? In a word, into the hands of the secular 
press we may now confidently commit both the 
present and the future fortunes of the highest 
religious thoughts we have to utter, and the most 
progressive religious conclusions at which we may 
hereafter, from time to time, arrive. Granted that 
these higher religious thoughts, as we conceive them 
to be, will in all cases be to some degree erroneous, 
and in some instances will be positively untenable. 
Granted, also, that our more advanced religious con- 
clusions will always demand a much more rigid and 
exhaustive verification than we have been able to 
give them in private, no matter how many years we 
may have felt constrained to withhold them from the 
public, and no matter, likewise, in view of what 
prolonged and patient processes of investigation we 
may have come eventually to adopt them. Still, 
when we have fairly done our personal part in private 
to eliminate from our higher religious thoughts their 
elements of error, and to verify, as best we can, our 
more advanced religious conclusions, we then have 
the manifest right, through the secular editor or 



1 82 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 

publisher, or both, to submit them to the considera- 
tion, to the criticisms, to the acceptance, or to the 
rejection of the heretical, or modern religious brother- 
hood at large. 

As for the rest, much as still remains to say in 
order to treat of this immensely important question 
of religious liberty with any degree of completeness, 
we will only add that we can just now recall no more 
noble and stimulating words in which we may con- 
clude than these by Herbert Spencer : " Whoever 
hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest 
truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the 
time, may re-assure himself by looking at his acts 
from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly 
realize the fact that opinion is the agency through 
which character adapts external arrangements to 
itself — that his opinion rightly forms part of this 
agency — is a unit of force constituting, with other 
such units, the general power which works out social 
[and religious] changes, and he will perceive that he 
may properly give full utterance to his innermost 
conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. 
It is not for nothing that he has in him these sym- 
pathies with some principles, and repugnance to 
others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations 
and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the 
time. He must remember that while 'he is a de- 
scendant of the past he is a parent of the future, 



RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 83 

and that his thoughts are as children born to him 
which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every 
other man, may properly consider himself as one of 
the myriad agencies through whom works the Un- 
known Cause [by which some of us at least will 
understand the Divine Heavenly Father], and when 
the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, 
he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that 
belief. . . . Not as adventitious, therefore, will the 
wise man regard the faith which is in him. The 
highest truth he sees, he will fearlessly utter, know- 
ing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing 
his right part in the world ; knowing that if he can 
effect the change he aims at, well ; if not, well also, 
though not so well." ^6 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, QUOTA- 
TIONS, AND EVIDENCES. 



CHAPTER I. 

1. xnt; Modern Representations of the Life of Jesus, Four 

Discourses delivered before the Evangelical Union at 
Hanover, Germany, by Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, First 
Preacher to the Court. Translated from the third Ger- 
man edition, by Charles E. Grinnell. Boston: 1868. 
p. I. 

2. Modern Donbt and Christian Belief A Series of Apolo- 

getic Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. 
By Theodore Christlieb, D.D., University Preacher 
and Professor of Theology- at Bonn. Translated, with the 
author's sanction, chiefly by the Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, 
Ph.D., and edited by the Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A.. 
Vicar of Eaton Royal and Rural Dean. New York: 
1874. P- 28. 

3. The Divinity of onr Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Eight Lectures dehvered before the University of Oxford, 
in the year 1866, on the Foundation of the late Rev. John 
A. Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. By Henry 
Parry Liddon, M.A., Student at Christ Church, Preb- 
endary of Salisbury, and Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of 
Salisbury. New York : 1868. Preface, pp. xv., xvi. 

185 



1 86 IXDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 

4. The Resuj-rection of Jestis Christy with att Exauiination of 

the Spccjilatiojis of Stfauss in his New Life of yesus, 
and a?i Introductory View of the Present Position of 
Theological Itiqiciry in referetice to the Existence of God 
and the Miraculous Evidences of Chj'istianity. By the 
late Robert Macpherson, D.D., Professor of Theology 
in the University of Aberdeen. Edinburgh and London : 
1867. p. 6. 

5. /^., p. 31. 

6. The Early Years of Christianity. By E. De Pressens^, 

D.D., author of "Jesus Christ, his Times, Life, and 
Work." Translated by Annie Harwood. The Apostol- 
ical Era. New York: 1870. Preface to English edition, 
pp. 6, 7. 

7. A Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to the 

Christian Religion. Eight Lectures preached before the 
University of Oxford in the year 1862, on the Foundation 
of the late Rev. John A. Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salis- 
bury. By Adam Storey Farrar, M.A., Michel Fellow 
of Queen's College, Oxford. New York : 1873, General 
Analysis of Lectures, from IV. to VI 11., inclusive. 



CHAPTER 11. 

1. Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine. The 

fifth series of the Cunningham Lectures. By Robert 
Rainy, D.D., Professor of Divinity and Church History, 
New College, Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 1874. p. 257. 

2. Scotch Serjno?is, 1880. New York : 188 1. pp. 194, 195. 

3. Decreta Doginatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et 

de Ecclesia Christi, Caput III. 

4. Id., Caput II. 

5. Id., Caput II. 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 18/ 

6. The E7icyclopcEdia Britannica. Ninth Edition. Boston: 

1876. Art. Canon. 

7. Critical History of Free Thought^ p. 473. 

8. A New Life of Jesus. By David Friedrich Strauss. 

Authorized translation. In two volumes. London and 
Edinburgh: 1865. Vol. I., Preface, p. xiv. 



CHAPTER III. 

1. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. Twelve Lec- 

tures on Biblical Criticism. By W. Robertson Smith, 
M.A. New York: 1881. pp. 132, 133, 174, 175. 

2. Encyclopcedia Britannica. Art. Canon. 

3. The Old Testament i7i the Jewish Churchy p. 153. 

4. Canon Westcott, in Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of 

the Bible. Art. Canon. 

5. Dr. Davidson. E7tcy. Brit. Art. Canon. 

6. Id. 

7. Lecttires on the History of the Jewish Church. Part II., 

From Samuel to the Captivity. By Arthur Penrhyn 
Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. New York: 
1877. P- 650. 

8. Ency. Brit. Art. Bible. 

9. The Old Testament in the Jewish Churchy pp. 321-324. 

10. Ency. Brit. Art. Canon. 

11. Deer eta Dogjnatica, Caput II. 



CHAPTER IV. 

1. New Life of Jesus. Vol. II., p. 183. 

2. Id., p. 183. 

3. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief p. 473. 



1 88 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, 

4. Studies of Religions History and Criticism. By M. Ernest 

Renan, Member of the Institute of France, and Author 
of the Life of Jesus. Translated by O. B. Frothingham. 
With a Biographical Introduction by M. Henri Harrisse. 
New York: 1864. p. 339. 

5. This citation from Professor Tischendorf may be found 

in the Bre?neii Lectures on Ftmdametttal, Living, Religious 
Questions, translated by Rev. D. Heagle, and published 
in Boston (1871), pp. 217, 218. 

6. yesus Christ, his Times, Life, and Work. By E. De Pres- 

sense, D.D. New York: 1868. p. 127. 

7. Id, p. 144. 

8. Id., p. 144, note. 

9. Id., pp. 127, 128. 

10. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 420-422. 

11. Compare 2 Kings xxiii. with 2 Chron. xxxiv. 

12. Compare 2 Kings xii. with 2 Chron. xxiv. 

13. Compare i Kings xv. 14, xxii. 43, with 2 Chron. xiv. 5, 

xvii. 6, XV. 17, XX. 33. 

14. Deer eta Dogmatica, Caput II. 

15. Hours with the Bible, or the Scriptures in the Light of 

Modern Discovery and Knowledge from Creation to the 
Patriarchs. By Cunningham Geikie, D.D., author of 
"The Life and Words of Christ." New York: 1881. 

P- 39- 

16. Id., p. 41. 

17. Nature and the Bible. A course of Lectures delivered in 

New York in December, 1874, on the Morse Foundation 
of the Union Theological Seminary. By J. W. Dawson, 
LL.D., F.R.S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill 
University; author of "Archaia," "Arcadian Geology," 
"The Story of the Earth," etc. New York: 1875. P- 26. 

18. Id, p. 25. 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 1 89 

19. The History of Creation., or the Development of tlie Earth 

and its Inhabitafits by the Action of Natural Causes. 
A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in 
general, and that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in 
particular. From the German of Ernest Haeckel, Pro- 
fessor in the University of Jena. Revised translation, by 
E. Ray Lankester, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, 
Oxford. In two volumes. New York: 1876. Vol. I., 

PP- 38, 39- 

20. Critiques and Addresses. By Thomas Henry Huxley, 

LL.D., F.R.S. New York : 1873, P- 239. 

21. Nature and the Bible., pp. 'JT., 78. 

22. Id, pp. 84-88. 

23. Critiques and Addresses., p. 238. 

24. Gen. ii. 20, 21. 

25. Moral Difficulties connected with the Bible, Second 

Series. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1872. Preached in 
her Majesty's Chapel at Whitehall. By James Augustus 
Hessey, D.C.L., Preacher to the Honorable Society of 
Gray's Inn, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Examining 
Chaplain to the Bishop of London, late Head-Master of 
Merchant Taylor's School, and sometime Bampton Lec- 
turer and Grinfield Lecturer in the University of Oxford. 
London : 1873. P- 35* 

26. Ency. Brit. Art. Bible. 

27. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 212. 

28. History of the Old Testament in the Jewish Churchy pp. 

145, 146. 

29. Josephus contra Apion, \. 8. 

30. IrencBus adv. Haer., ii. 28, 2. 

31. Old Testament in the Jewish Church., p. 99. 

32. Id., p. 391- 

33. Id., p. 439. 



IQO INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 

34. 2 Sam. xi. 15. 

35. Professor W. Robertson Smith. Old Testament in the 

Jewish Churchy p. 174. 



CHAPTER V. 

1. The Life of Jesus. By Ernest Renan, Membre de 

I'Institut. New York: 1868. p. 19. 

2. The Old Testa?nent in the Jewish Church, p. no. 

3. History of the Jewish Church. Second series, pp. 651, 

652. 

4. Supernatural Religion. An Inquiry into the Reality of a 

Divine Revelation. In two volumes. London: 1874. 
Vol. I., p. 449. 
%. The Contents a7td Origin of the Acts of the Apostles criti- 
cally investigated. By Dr. Eduard Zeller. In two 
volumes. London: 1875. Vol. L, p. 159. 

6. Supernatural Religion. Vol. II., p. 474. 

7. Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, with 

Special Reference to the Theories of Renan, Strauss, and 
the Tubingen School. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Pro- 
fessor of Church History at Yale College. New York: 
1871. p. 159. 

8. Id., p. 41. 

9. Id., p. 44. 

10. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 56. 

11. When were our Gospels written? By Const antine 

Tischendorf. New York. p. 58. 

1 2. The A uthorship of the Fourth Gospel : External Evidences. 

By Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., Bussey Professor of New 
Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity 
School of Harvard University. Boston: 1880. p. 20. 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. I9I 

13. Id., pp. 24, 25. 

14. Id., p. 96. 

15. Id., p. 21. 

16. Supernatural Religion. Vol. I., p. 304. 

17. /</., pp. 318, 320. 

18. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 141. 

19. Evangelical History. 1838. The Present Stage of the 

Gospel Question. 1856. 

20. Vie de Jesus. Treizieme Edition. Paris: 1867. See, for 

illustrations, pp. Ixiii, 514, 536. 

21. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., pp. 129-140. 

22. Supernatural Origifi of Christianity, pp. 191, 192. 

23. Id., 38. 

24. Bremen Lecture, p. 218. 

25. Professor George P. Fisher. Supernatural Origin of 

Christiafiity, p. 191. 

26. Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 249. 

27. Life of Jesus, pp. 28, 29. 

28. Professor George P. Fisher. Supernatural Origin of 

Christianity, p. 191. 

29. The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, p. 7. 

30. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 152. 

31. Life of Jesus, pp. 28, 34. 



CHAPTER VI. 

1. Literature a?td Dogma. An Essay towards a Better Appre- 

hension of the Bible. By Matthew Arnold, D.C.L., 
formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, 
and Fellow of Oriel College. Boston: 1876. Preface, 
pp. vi, vii. 

2. Deer eta Dogmatica, Caput II. 



192 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, 

3. Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine^ p. 1 1 5. 

4. The Limits of Religious Thought examined. Eight Lec- 

tures delivered before the University of Oxford, in the 
year 1858, on the Bampton Foundation. By Henry 
LoNGUEViLLE MAN5EL, B.D., Reader in Moral and Meta- 
physical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Tutor and late 
Fellow of St. John's College. Boston: 1866. p. 47. 

5. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief p. 232. 

6. Id., p. 237. 

7. Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, and their Relation to Old Testa- 

ment Faith. Lectures delivered to Graduates of the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. By J. B. Mozley, D.D., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Divinity, and Canon of Christ Church. New 
York: 1877. Lecture IV. 

8. r Chron. xx. 3. 

9. Josh. xxiv. 12. 

10. Id., x. II. 

11. 2 Sam. vii. 10. 

12. 2 Chron. xxii. 21. 

13. Josh. ix. 24; compare with Exod. xxiii. 32; Deut. vii. i, 2. 

14. Judg. xvi. 23. 

15. 2 Sam. Ixxxi. 10. 

f6. 2 Kings xviii. 29-35. 

17. Gen. iii. 8. 

18. E7icy. Americana. Art. Cromwell. 

19. Id. 

20. Id, 

21. Id, 

22. Josh. vi. 1-20. 

23. Id., X. 13. 

24. Id., X. 13. 

25. Life ofjesus^ pp. 283, 284. 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, I93 



CHAPTER VII. 

1. The Old Faith and the New: A Confession. By David 

Friedrich Strauss. Authorized translation, by Ma- 
THiLDE Blind. London: 1873. p. 168. 

2. Studies of Religious History and Criticism^ pp. 339, 340. 

3. Id., p. 47. 

4. Id., p. 56. 

5. Id., p. SI. 

6. Id., p. 273. 

7. English Conferences of Ernest Renan : Rome and Chris- 

tianity, Marcus Aurelius. Translated by Clara Erskine 
Clement. Boston: 1880. p. 30. 

8. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 385. 

9. Id., 106. 

zo. Nature and Utility of Religion and Theism. By John 
Stuart Mill. London: 1874. pp. 255, 256. 

11. First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. By 

Herbert Spencer. New York: 1872. pp. loi, 102. 

12. Id.^ pp. 1 1 6-1 18. 

13. Fragments of Science. A Series of Detached Essays and 

Reviews. By John Tyndall, F.R.S. London: 1876. 

P- 535. 

14. Id, p. 355. 

15. Id, p. 529. 

16. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, pp. 340, 341. 

17. See, for illustration, First Pi'inciples, pp. 108, 123. 

18. Fragments of Science, p. 537. 

19. Id., p. 576. 

20. Id., p. 328. 



194 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1. Bremen Lecture, p. 200. 

2. The Old Faith and the N'ew, p. 53. 

3. Modern Donbt and Christian Belief, p. 340. 

4. The Old Faith and the New, pp. 54, 55. 

5. Life ofJes7is, p. 104. 

6. The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, considered 

in Eight Lectures, delivered before the University of Ox- 
ford, on the Bainpton Foundation. By Thomas D eh any 
Bernard, M.A., of Exeter College, and Rector of Walcot. 
Boston: 1873. Preface, p. xiv. 

7. Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, his Life and Works, his 

Epistles and Teachings. A Contribution to a Critical 
History of Primitive Christianity. By Dr. Ferdinand 
Christian Baur, Professor of Evangelical Theology in 
the University of Tiibingen. In two volumes. Second 
edition. Issued after his death by Dr. E. Zeller. Trans- 
lated from the German. London : 1873. Vol. I., p. 299. 

8. Critical History of Free Thought,"^. 146. 

9. Letters, Lectures, and Reviews, includifig the Phrontisterion, 

or Oxford in the Nineteenth Cetitury. By the Very Rev. 
Henry Longueville Mansel, D.D., sometime Fellow 
and Tutor at St. John's College, Wayneflete Professor of 
Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Magdalen College, 
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Canon of Christ 
Church, Oxford, and Dean of St. Paul's. Edited by 
Henry W. Chandler, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke Col- 
lege, Oxford, and Wayneflete Professor of Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy. London: 1873. p. 315. 

10. Nature and Utility of Religion, p. 114. 

11. /</., pp. 253-255. 

12. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 161. 



INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 1 95 

^3. Id., p. 1 86. 

14. Life of Jesus, pp. 365-367. 

15. New Life of Jesus. Vol. II., pp. 437, 438. 



CHAPTER IX. 

1. David Friedrich Strauss ifi his Life and Writifigs. By 

Eduard Zeller. Authorized translation. London : 
1874. pp. SS-S7' 

2. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I. Inscription to the Memory of 

William Strauss, p. iii. 

3. Renan's Studies of Religious History and Criticisjn, p. ix. 

4. Id., p. xxii. 

5. Id., pp. xxiv., XXV. 

6. History of Rationalism, embracing a Survey of the Present 

State of Protestant Theology. By John F. Hurst, D.D. 
Fifth edition. New York. pp. 497, 498. 

7. Id., pp. 503-505- 

8. Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. By Thomas 

Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S., author of " Man's Place 
in Nature," " Origin of Species," etc. New York : 1871. 

p. 344. 

9. Fragments of Science, p. 379. 



CHAPTER X. 

1. Short Studies on Great Subjects. By James Anthony 

Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 
New York : 1871. p. 226. 

2. The ContefHporary Review. London: 1872. Vol. XX., pp. 

205, 206. 

3. Id., p. 210. 

4. Fragments of Science, p. 471. 

5. Id., p. 466. 



196 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 

6. Contemporary Review. Vol. XX., pp. 778, 779. 

7. The General Epistle of James, v. 14, 15. 

8. Contemporary Review. Vol. XX., p. 782. 

9. Fragments of Science, pp. 468, 469. 

10. Id., pp. 482, 483. 

1 1 . History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. By 

John William Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor in the 
University of New York ; author of " A Treatise on 
Human Physiology," " History of the Intellectual De- 
velopment of Europe," " History of the American Civil 
War," and of many Experimental Memoirs on Chemical 
and other Scientific Subjects. New York: 1875. p. 168. 

12. Id., p. 171. 

13. Id., pp. 160, 161. 

14. Id., p. 52. 

15. /r/., p. 215. 

16. Syllabus Errorum, § III. 

17. Critiques and Addresses, p. 240. 

18. Scribner's Monthly for August, September, and October, 

1873. 

19. Id., for November, 1873. Dr. Holland's "Topic of the 

Times," on " The New York Observer." 

20. The same number of " Scribner," and the same " Topic 

of the Times." 

21. The Person of Christ, the Miracle of History. With a 

Reply to Strauss and Renan, and a Collectio7i of Testi- 
mo7iies of U7ibelievers. By Philip Schaff, D.D. Boston, 
p. 230. 

22. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 183. 

23. History of Rationalisjn, p. 257. 

24. The Early Years of Christianity. Preface to the English 

edition, p. 4. 

25. The Supertiatural Origin of Christianity, p. 5. 

26. First Principles, p. 123. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a series of volumes, to b« 
iasaed under the title of 

CURRENT DISCUSSION, 

A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS 
OF THE TIME. 

The seiies will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed U 
bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in the 
library, those important and representative papers from recent English periodi- 
cals, which may fairly be said to form the best history of the thought and in- 
vestigation of the last few years. It is characteristic of recent thought and 
science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important 
work has appeared in the foiin of contributions to reviews and magazines ; the 
thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is 
easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, 
rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only. 
As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent in- 
terest, almost all of whose literature exists only iv 'he shape of detached papeis, 
individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody's mouth 
— yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who 
have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study h mg 
files of periodicals. 

In so collecting chese separate papers as to give the reader a fair •{ not 
complete view of the discussions in which they form a part ; to make them 
convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussions ; and esjjeci- 
ally to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the histoiy c( 
modem thought, — it is believed that this series will do a service that will be 
widely appreciated. 

Such papers naturally include three classes : — those which by their originality 
have recently led discussion into altogether new channels ; those which have 
attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the 
otlier in great current questions ; and finally, purely critical and analytical dis- 
sertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each oi 
these classes of expression. 



It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such gen> 
eral divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes will be 
devoted : — 

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. NATURAL SCIENCE. 

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY. 

QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 

ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, 

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, LITERARY TOPICS. 

Among the material selected for the first volume (International Politics), 
^•hich will be issued immediately, are the following papers : 

Archibald Forbes's Essay on "The Russians, Turks, and Bul- 
rat;ians;" Vsct. Stratford de Redcliffe's "Turkey;" Mr. Glad- 
stone's "Montenegro;" Professor Gold win Smith's Paper on "The 
Political Destiny of Canada," and his Essay called " The Slaveholder 
AND THE Turk ; " Professor Blackie's " Prussia in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury ; " Edward Dicey's "Future of Egypt;" Louis Kossuth's 
"What is in Store for Europe;" and Professor Freeman's "Relation 
of the English People to the War." 

Among the contents of the second volume (Questions of Belief), are : 

The two well-known " Modern Symposia ; " the Discussion by Professor 
Huxley, Mr. Hutton, Sir J. F. Stephen, Lord Selborne, James Martin- 
eau, Frederic Harrison, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Duke of Argyll, 
and others, on " The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in a Re- 
ligious Belief; " and the Discussion byHuxLEY, Hutton, Lord Blatchford, 
the Hon. RoDEN NoEL, Lord Selborne, Canon Barry, Greg, the Rev. 
Baldwin Brown, Frederic Harrison, and others, on "The Soul and 
Future Life. Also, Professor Calderwood's "Ethical Aspects of the 
Development Theory ; " Mr. G. H. Lewes's Paper on "The Course of 
Modern Thought;" Thomas Hughes on "The Condition and Pros- 
spects of the Church of England;" W. H. Mallock's "Is Litji 
Worth Living ? " Frederic Harrison's " The Soul and Future Life ; '■ 
and the Rev. R. F. Littledale's " The Pantheistic Factor in Christian 
Thought." 

The volumes will be printed in a handsome crown octavo form, and will 
sell for about $i 50 each. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 182 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



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